20 YEARS OF DANGEROUS DOGMA

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: october 2013 :: RMTnews 10 You cannot look at any aspect of our railways in 2013 without encountering the pernicious impact of privatisation. The highest fares in the world, record profits for the privateers, record public subsidies, de-industrialisation of rail manufacturing, de-staffing, growing casualisation and job cuts all due to the market being forced into what is a natural monopoly. It is worth reminding ourselves that more than twenty years ago the then Tory chair of the Transport Committee warned that selling off rail would become a ‘Poll Tax on wheels’. I rarely agree with a Tory but two decades on you can’t odds that logic. The rail franchising fiasco is becoming all too clear as the real cost to the British people emerges from the secretive discussions between the current contract holders and transport officials. I defy anyone to explain, let alone defend, the level of sheer incompetence, systemic failure and political arrogance that led to the franchising timetable being spiked. The current contractors are now in a monopoly provider position where they can extract whatever price they want out of the government or bring the trains to a halt. That is unregulated, unashamed industrial action, without any ballot, in defence of the corporate profiteering that would see my union dragged into the courts with our assets sequestrated if we dared to adopt similar tactics. Talk about onr law for the boss class and another for the working class. It’s that same rotten culture that has led to casualisation of railway jobs in an industry where security and a sense of common pride and purpose used to be a cornerstone. All of those positive benefits of working in the rail sector are threatened by the creeping introduction of agencies offering zero hours contracts where safety-critical jobs are delivered on what is effectively nothing better than the lump. The agencies, and the so- called ‘payroll companies’ which are nothing more than a cover for bogus self-employment, serve a political purpose – to create a reserve pool of labour, hired and fired at will and designed to undermine the pay and conditions of the permanent workforce. Add to that the fact that the safety implications are horrific. Fatigue, competence, PPE and communications are just some of the issues repeatedly raised by RMT safety representatives. Indeed, following the publication of RMT’s report The Great Payroll Rip-Off, Simon Burns, the Transport Minister, 20 YEARS OF DANGEROUS DOGMA RMT general secretary Bob Crow looks back at 20 years of rail privatisation and calls for an end to the experiment