THE TYNE and Wear Metro is a public-sector success story and should be
kept that way, delegates at the annual conference of Britain’s biggest rail
union insisted today.
As RMT’s AGM called on the government to implement Labour policy on
public ownership, RMT general secretary Bob Crow and Northern TUC secretary
Kevin Rowan issued a joint plea for an end to the threat to fragment and
privatise the northeast’s Metro network.
Letters sent today to Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly and Tyne and Wear
Passenger Transport Executive (Nexus) director-general Bernard Garner point out
that the Metro is already achieving record levels of punctuality and ridership.
The letters express the concern that funding for a welcome upgrade of
the network has been made conditional on splitting up and privatising the
Metro’s operations and infrastructure.
Nexus bulletins indicate that the government has
insisted on the break-up, overruling the PTE’s preferred option of maintaining
Metro as a ‘vertically integrated’ railway.
"The model now being proposed for the Metro is in danger of
repeating the mistakes of railway privatisation," Bob Crow and Kevin Rowan
say.
"Safety will be threatened as the Metro will be fragmented into
different sectors, meaning less effective control and private companies cutting
corners to save money.
"Fragmentation will lead to a less efficient, more expensive
railway which is why Nexus were originally opposed to the break up of the Metro
and why we remain opposed to it.
"Large amounts of fare revenue and public subsidy will be used to
pay dividends to shareholders instead of being used to improve the Metro for
the benefit of passengers and the wider community in the North East.
"And of course Metro workers’ pensions, jobs and conditions will
be under threat as the private sector tries to maximise profits at the expense
of Metro workers," the letters say.
