EUROPEAN RAIL WORKERS PROTEST AGAINST ‘RECAST’ EU RAIL PACKAGE

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: june 2011 :: RMTnews 21 attempts to make railways mimic competition in air, road or maritime transport are doomed. Railways are natural monopolies with a highly specialised infrastructure, high ‘sunken’ costs and enormous social and economic benefits. The only question is whether monopolies are publicly owned and controlled in the interests of society, or whether, as in the view of both Sir Roy McNulty and the European Commission, they should serve the interests of finance capitalists – the bankers, PFI-profiteers and big business. By buying up competitors in recent years, global logistics companies such as DHL (Germany's privatised post office), Deutsche Bahn (Germany's state railways) and SNCF (French state railways) have built themselves up to be "Euro champions" - competing globally in transport markets while collecting railways across Europe as in a game of monopoly. The European Commission aims to fragment national rail systems to ensure permanent private ownership and bumper profits for investors achieved on the backs of cuts to safety, jobs and services. This latest railway power grab by the European Commission is based on powers it gave itself under section 290 of the Lisbon Treaty. Transport policy is defined as an area of "shared competence", like the internal market, in which EU member states "cannot exercise competence in areas where the Union has done so". So when the EU decides a rail policy, national rail authorities have to comply under the Lisbon Treaty. The unelected Commission will also require binding rules for rail operators that undermine the democratic right of rail workers to strike, a constitutional right in some countries. Annex VII of the directive states that contracts shall provide "rules for dealing with major disruptions of operations of emergency situations including a minimum service level in case of strikes". How is the European Commission going to implement such an unpopular project? • First, by enforcing separated management of track and trains, breaking up "holding companies" by which some states have maintained a common parent company with separate accounts to avoid outright privatisation. • Second, through further fragmentation with "more flexible" service facilities for train maintenance, cleaning, refuelling and shunting to boost outsourcing and subcontracting in rail services. This is an invitation to ‘sub-contracting specialists’ such as ISS, Mitie, etc to exploit casual workers across the Europe, as they have in Britain. • Third, the commission wants to take away from national governments and rail authorities the power to allocate train paths and set track access charges. National rail companies will no longer control transport planning, which undermines co-operation between national transport authorities and railway operators. • The directive also opens access to rail infrastructure for all types of transport operator, while competition will be prioritised and safety regulation loses its independence. • Fourth, the directive encourages private finance initiatives (PFI) for design, commission, development and operation of railways. • Fifth, the directive repeals legislation on safety of staff, rolling stock, working conditions and social rights of workers and consumers, and imposes strikebreaking clauses in commercial rail contracts. Under rail privatisation in Britain subsidies have quadrupled, while profits of the unloved monopolists running public transport have soared alongside rail fares. The so-called ‘Recast’ is more than a re-design. The proposal creates a ‘Single European Railway Market’ by destroying major, publicly owned, national railway operators. Sir Roy McNulty’s ‘value for money study’ into Britain’s fragmented, costly and privatised railway is a road map for UK rail privateers (from major banks such as HSBC and RBS, to spivs such as Brian Souter and Richard Branson) to profit from EU-wide rail privatisation. More than ever rail workers’ in Britain must unite internationally to co-ordinate our resistance to the attack from financial interests on rail safety, jobs and services. M ore than 1,000 railway workers from 15 European countries converged on Brussels last month to protest against plans to further fragment and privatise national railway companies across Europe. Using the slogan “No separation – No fragmentation – For integrated rail companies”, rail workers demonstrated against proposals contained in the so-called “Recast of the 1st Railway Package” produced by the unelected European Commission and presently being discussed in the European Parliament Transport Committee. The European Transport Workers Federation (ETF) opposes the plans as full separation of railway operations and infrastructure management dismantles integrated railway companies, fragments rail networks and hands them over to big business. ETF deputy general secretary Sabine Trier said: “Together with the plan to liberalise domestic rail passenger services, EU policy makers ignore the far- reaching social impact of these proposals”. ETF Railway Section president Guy Greivelding said that the transport committee would vote on the Directive in July 2011 and in September the European Parliament will vote in plenary. “This campaign has the objective to raise awareness that, when this directive is implemented, the idea of railways as a service of general interest or public service will be completely abandoned,” he said. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that the model being proposed by the EU today had been imposed by the Tories years ago and rail workers in the UK are suffering the results. “The EU seems to have one policy, hand everything to the private sector in the name of ‘competition’ and damn the consequences,” he said. EUROPEAN RAIL WORKERS PROTEST AGAINST ‘RECAST’ EU RAIL PACKAGE