PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT is calling an international protest at the European Railway Agency in the French city of Lille on April 13. This will be important for several reasons. Imposition of neoliberal European Union rules, dreamt up by unelected European Commissioners, is devastating transport networks across the EU. From January 1 this year the EU’s ‘Third Rail Package’ demands all international passenger rail routes must be opened to market competition, accelerating fragmentation and privatisation. In crisis-hit Greece, the All-Greek Federation of Railway Workers reports EU-driven rail privatisation has caused the loss of over half of all rail jobs in the country. French rail workers are fighting huge job cuts in the liberalised rail freight sector and Belgian rail workers are furious at EU rail liberalisation policies, which they say created the conditions for the recent catastrophic rail crash at Buizingen near Brussels. Ferry services in Italy face privatisation, like RMT shipping members at Caledonian Macbrayne. Greek ferry workers are fighting social dumping as the government seeks to replace them with exploited foreign workers in a drive to save money. These attacks on workers and public transport services have a common cause: EU obsession with liberalised market competition, which is driving a dangerous race to the bottom in safety, wages, jobs and conditions. French, Belgian and British rail unions are united against plans to dilute current safety rules for passenger trains transiting the Channel tunnel, which EU competition zealots claim could prevent Deutsche Bahn, Trenitalia, or French privateer Veolia from competing with Eurostar services. This is a perfect example of what is wrong with the EU. Railways embody the principle of cooperation, not competition. Yet, in its ideological quest to lever in market competition to international rail services, the EU is inviting the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority to reduce safety standards to facilitate lower costs for competitors. The EU wants competition introduced at the cost of safety standards. Currently, passenger trains using the tunnel must have the capability to split and exit the tunnel in either direction in an emergency. Eurostar is the only train operator satisfying this safety requirement. Last month, RMT together with railworkers’ and firefighters’ unions met an Intergovernmental Commission on Channel tunnel safety preparing the route to meet EU competition requirements. We found the IGC has been conducting ‘secret consultations’ with rail industry bosses on ‘dumbing down’ safety standards. Having been caught out, the IGC is now promising to take full account of trade unions’ views on their proposals. This makes our international protest in Lille even more important. Make sure your branch is represented! Last month in Liverpool I had the privilege to address the best-attended RMT Young Members’ Conference ever. It reminded me of attending RMT’s AGM as a young member in Llandudno in 1992. If youth is the future, then judging from this year’s Conference, RMT is in good hands. Our well-attended National Conference of Signalling Grades in February this year in Stoke discussed the current dispute with Network Rail. I reminded conference delegates of the great tradition of industrial unionism represented by signalman, Charles Watkins, a pioneer of the National Union of Railwaymen. RMT’s inaugural Charles Watkins Memorial Lecture will take place from 18.00 on Wednesday, March 31 at the Marx Memorial Library in London and is advertised in this magazine. Professor Mary Davis, labour historian and author of Comrade or Brother?: The History of the British Labour Movement 1789-1951 and Sylvia Pankhurst: A Life in Radical Politics will be speaking on the subject of ‘Labour History for the Labour Movement: why we must reclaim our past’. We ignore our history at our peril. Pulling Together: a popular history of RMT, will also be formally launched at the lecture. I hope to see you all there, but if you can’t make it order a copy, it’s free to members! In solidarity Alex Gordon President’s column OFF TO LILLE! RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: march 2010 :: RMTnews 21 fewer and shorter trains, defective braking systems, lateness and a maintenance backlog resulting in an increasing number of metro users travelling by car, resulting in chaotic traffic. In 1994, management of the S-Bahn is the responsibility of Deutsche Bahn (DB), the state- run rail operator that is earmarked for privatisation when Germany’s economic and financial crisis eases. Last year, the Greater Berlin Council withheld 37 million euros in subsidies as fines for DB’s bad management and now it says it wants to hand over a quarter of S-Bahn lines to a private competitor. The present operator carries 1.3 million passengers daily. A major row is expected with DB that says it will not relinquish the lines. Its present S-Bahn contract ends in 2017. FRENCH UNIONS FIGHT RAIL DEREGULALTION As France’s powerful rail unions continue industrial action against projected job losses in 2010, they are stepping up pressure to fight the government's EU-inspired freight and passenger plans. Meanwhile, the national financial watchdog, the Cour des Comptes, has slammed working time, retirement and salary arrangements of the country’s national rail operator, SNCF. In its annual report, released at the same time as the unions’ February 3 strike, France’s national financial accounting body, has criticised the SNCF’s bad management and recommended it “optimises its workforce and improves productivity”, and adapts to EU’s competition rules. Unions say that the loss of 15,600 jobs between 2002 and 2008 – almost nine per cent of the workforce - is unacceptable and want talks on management’s plans for passenger services and its inability to attract freight traffic.