'The biggest threat since Beeching...' writes Bob Crow, 1 February 2012

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the Morning Star:

Across Britain tomorrow morning, rail workers will be handing postcards to commuters warning of the dangers facing the rail industry if Con-Dem and SNP ministers get their way.

Higher fares, fewer staff, fewer services and lower safety standards add up to a bleak future for train travel - but these will be the stark reality if the recent McNulty report forms the basis of a government "command paper" expected to be published shortly.

In Scotland there is the added threat of proposals by the SNP government that would split up Scotrail and hand more power and profit to business interests.

It would be no exaggeration to say that our railways face the biggest threat since the dark days of Beeching's axe more than half a century ago.

Wealthy businessman Sir Roy McNulty - his CV includes stints running the Civil Aviation Authority and Shorts - was asked by the previous Labour government to study the costs of Britain's rail network.

The one thing McNulty wasn't asked to look at was the damaging and costly effect of privatisation, imposed by the last Tory government in the mid-1990s.

So although, quite rightly, McNulty found that Britain's railways were more fragmented and expensive to run than their still publicly owned European neighbours, he wasn't able - even if he had been willing - to explore the obvious benefits of restoring the industry to public ownership.

Never mind that the private sector has leeched a staggering ^11 billion from the railways since privatisation.

Never mind that the dangers created by a privatised, fragmented railway have been at the heart of disasters at Hatfield, Potters Bar, Tebay and Grayrigg.

And never mind that investment in the privatised railway is now three or four times more expensive than in the last days of publicly owned British Rail.

Instead, McNulty's blinkered report recommends more fragmentation, imposition of driver-only operation and the removal of safety-trained guards from all trains, higher fares, massive cuts in station staffing, wholesale closure of ticket offices, dangerous fragmentation of Network Rail and a watering down of maintenance standards.

Added together this will deliver the opposite of what is needed - it will mean a more fragmented, more expensive railway with fewer services, more private-sector exploitation and more risk.

Of course in business-speak "efficient" is a euphemism for "cheap," and staff are seen as costs rather than assets.

Hardly surprising then that more than a third of McNulty's efficiency savings would come from cutting staff and the pay of those who would remain after the carnage.

Yet the one element of the railway industry that has become more efficient is its staff.

McNulty zeroes in on the cost of rail staff - but omits to mention that productivity has outstripped pay increases, meaning that the men and women who get out there every day and run the railway have actually delivered more for less.

McNulty even removed figures from his final report that showed UK^▸ (United Kingdom) rail workers to be among the most productive in Europe and admitted in a letter to the TUC that there is "no strong correlation between staff costs in the rail industry and public subsidy."

In Scotland the Rail 2014 consultation launched by the Scottish government is essentially a tartan-covered McNulty that would carve up Scotrail, cut services and staff, increase fares still further and pass more control to the privateers.

And on London Underground, where hundreds of station staff have already been cut, the Tory mayor has come up with an "operational strategy" that would decimate jobs on the network in an effort to plug the gaping funding hole left by the collapse of Tube privatisation.

RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) has made clear where it stands on these attacks.

We will not stand casually by and watch our industry slashed and burned.

Alongside our sister unions we will fight these proposals with every means at our disposal - and if it takes industrial action, then so be it.

But this is an attack on passengers as well and we need to build a united campaign alongside rail users, transport and environmental campaigners and trades councils. It is in all our interests to demand an affordable, public railway that plays a positive role for the economy and the environment.

As usual, it's one rule for working people and another for those who look down on us.

London's Evening Standard reported last week that two Tory MPs^▸ (Member of Parliament) were apoplectic about the supposed "platinum-plated" earnings of London Underground train operators.

However, its sensational story about a "^61,000 pay package" was misleading because it included employer's pension contributions.

I am proud that RMT has negotiated a decent basic rate of pay for Tube drivers, who - along with all Tube staff - do a responsible, stressful and socially useful job.

That basic is ^42,424, and compares broadly with the pay of train drivers throughout the industry.

I am proud, too, that they have a final-salary pension scheme that offers some security in retirement, but Tube workers' pensions are no more "platinum plated" than Dominic Raab's or Kwasi Kwarteng's MPs' pensions.

The free travel that Tube workers receive is one that costs nothing to provide, unlike the publicly subsidised food and booze to which Mssrs Raab and Kwarteng are entitled, despite their ^65,000 MPs' salaries.

Of course if you add the 29 per cent employers' pension contributions and various other publicly funded perks to their salaries, they would end up with six-figure "packages."

But why pick on workers anyway?

Board-room pay last year went up by 55 per cent, in inverse proportion to the success of most companies, while Tube workers across the network have delivered record productivity by moving unprecedented numbers of passengers.

And then there are the bankers' bonuses, still being paid at obscene levels out of taxpayers' pockets since we rescued the banks with the biggest act of corporate welfare scrounging in history.

Yet Raab and Kwarteng prefer to rant about the ^250 customer-service bonus that Tube workers receive for doing a job in which they daily risk abuse and assault.

RMT believes that all workers, both public and private-sector, should have decent pay, safe conditions and secure, adequate pensions, and our union will continue proudly to strive for those objects for all the working men and women it represents.

Bob Crow is general secretary of RMT.

[JayMac]

It would be no exaggeration to say that our railways face the biggest threat since the dark days of Beeching's axe more than half a century ago.

I'd argue that most of this item is exactly that. Exaggeration.

[devon_metro]

Surely Bob Crow himself is the biggest threat? 

[matt473]

Higher fares, fewer staff and fewer services. Couldn't be a result of constant wage rises demanded otherwise staff go on strike could it? 

[old original]

Of course if you add the 29 per cent employers' pension contributions and various other publicly funded perks to their salaries, they would end up with six-figure "packages."

would that be a six figure package like Mr Crow gets from the subs of his members??




Edit note: quote marks fixed. CfN.

[Exeter]

So.................... as a matter of interest, when was anyone's journey on FGW^▸ (First Great Western) last disrupted by Industrial Action by FGW staff?? I honestly cannot recall!     

[eightf48544]

i find it really amusing  that Tory MPs^▸ (Member of Parliament) hate Tube drivers earning ^45K a year. After all they are mere servants it is disgusting they are paid so much.

Good luck to them they are only exploiting the capiltilist system by selling a scarce resource to the highest bidder. My 85 year mate gets very uptight when I say this to him! He can't quite get round to saying they should know their place. Class rules!

Now here's a problem for an intelligent economist, if one can be found. What value does a tube driver add to economy of London for ^45K compared to a banker on 7 figures. After all even if the banker drives his Porsche to work the tube driver brings all the tradesmen (I thought of lisitng them but too much typing I got to 25 without thinking), that provide all the supporting services that enabled the banker to extract 7 figures from the system.

[TerminalJunkie]

as a matter of interest, when was anyone's journey on FGW^▸ (First Great Western) last disrupted by Industrial Action by FGW staff? 

1st June 2004 (although strictly speaking it was Wessex Trains) - that was the day Dave Andrews decided he would check tickets instead of doing doors on the 0642 Barnstaple to Exmouth.

[dog box]

Wessex Trains was not FGW^▸ (First Great Western) so are we looking at zero days lost to industrial action throughout the whole length of the FGW Franchise so far

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

I have over the past week or so been having a clear out of papers stretching back more than 10 years. It takes a long time as I am for security purposes shredding every paper with some individual piece of information so it has meant reading lots of paper. It has made me realise how prices have risen over this period in that in the early days the costs of chartering a train was around ^2,000 to ^3,000 (for a 3 car turbo or double 2-car class 158 up to a maximum of around ^5,000 for an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) for a CLPG^» (Cotswold Line Promotion Group - about) excursion train. Our most recent HST charter cost ^12,500, an enormous increase well beyond the average level of inflationary price increases. I cannot comment with authority on the reasons but suspect that some element of Bob Crow's members pay may account for some of the increase

[Tim]

There is a real problem here.  We need to lower costs AND Bob want staff to keep their jobs and maintain a decent wage. 

The thing that strikes me most about this apparent conflict is that it is SOLUABLE.  The secret is to increase productivity of every staff member.  The Frieght companies have done this.  Frieght drivers now earn twice what they did under BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)), but as they are transporting more than twice the goods per staff member.  So everyone is a winner, we can get cost savings and staff can still earn good money.

The passenger railway has spectatularly failed to achieve this.  Despite rising passenger numbers and rising fares we have not seen any productivity increases. This ought to have happened.  ALL you need to do is double the number of seats on a train without doubling the number of staff on that train.  Or double the number of trains over a track whilst increasing maintenance cost by slightly less than double. 

In some cases where lack of staff productivity is partly due to staff inflexibility (and Bob is part of the problem here) but I have to say that most of the low productivity is caused by things like XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) running frequent but TOO SHORT trains which are structural rather than staff issues.  Issues like that are the big things and they need to be solved (and with rising passenger numbers it ought to be posible to solve them relatively painlessly) 

Bob and his crew are only a small part of the problem and I think being used as a scape goat by teh Tories.

[grahame]

... prices have risen over this period in that in the early days the costs of chartering a train was around ^2,000 to ^3,000 (for a 3 car turbo or double 2-car class 158 up to a maximum of around ^5,000 for an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) for a CLPG excursion train. Our most recent HST charter cost ^12,500, ...

There's some strange arithmetic around as well.  I too have seen quoted prices rise, by an order of magnitude in seven years in one case - that's right, an extra zero on the end.  Conspiracy theorists who I spoke with suggested that's because the company quoting thought that someone would pay the higher price.  Others pointed to cap and collar, where the company only gets to retain 20% of the revenue, having to pass the other 80% to the government.

But some of the rises can be explained by market forces - where trains weren't being fully utilised across the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) 7 years ago, they now are - are it's a market in which extra services and specials are sold to the highest bidder, not merely on the basis of "can we make money from a train that would otherwise be parked up?".   

[JayMac]

But many of the trains that are chartered from franchised TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) are indeed 'parked up' when those that wish to run a special or an excursion want them. That is, at the weekend, when a less intensive passenger service is run.