SCOTRAIL GOES PUBLIC

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: april 2022 :: RMTnews 7 ScotRail entered into public ownership this month and the union held a day of action to call on the Scottish government to ensure that the new operator delivers for Scotland’s rail passengers, communities and workers. The move takes the proportion of train services in public hands to 25 per cent, the highest percentage since the railways were privatised in 1994. Scotrail joins East Coast Main Line services taken back into public ownership from Stagecoach and Virgin in 2018, Northern, taken over from Arriva in March 2020, services in Wales, which were taken over by the Welsh government from a failed partnership involving Keolis and Amey and the Southeastern franchise, which Govia lost last year after failing to declare £25 million that it owed the taxpayer. On April 1, RMT members rallied at Glasgow Queen Street Station to call on the Scottish government to create a properly funded rail operator to ensure that Scotland’s railway is sustainable, affordable, accessible, and reliable and prioritises passengers, not profit. The union warned that the Scottish government must ensure that its new public sector operator breaks with past notions that rail jobs, services and ticket offices should be cut in pursuit of ‘efficiencies’ and is therefore calling for sustained public investment to ensure that at ScotRail: • Ticket offices are protected and expanded • Rail services are protected and expanded • Jobs are protected and expanded RMT said that this investment was essential in order to deliver modal shift from cars to rail necessary to meet the Scottish government’s climate change targets and will be asking passengers to write to their MSP and local councillor in support of these demands. RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said that RMT had long campaigned for public ownership. “The Scottish government now has the opportunity to break with the past and recognise the central role ScotRail has to play in meeting its climate change targets and invest in creating an affordable, accessible, reliable and improved rail network in Scotland. “ScotRail workers were heroes throughout the Covid- 19 pandemic yet as they transfer into the public sector, the Scottish government has continually refused to protect the existing no compulsory redundancy agreement. “To deliver the modal shifts necessary to tackle climate change and air pollution, the Scottish Government must commit to protecting and expanding all jobs and skills, ticket offices and ScotRail services,” he said. SCOTRAIL GOES PUBLIC A quarter of Britain’s privatised rail operations now back in the public sector