Year 2000 No. 13, January 26, 2000

Train Drivers’ Strike and the Deteriorating Conditions on the Railways

Workers' Daily Internet Edition : Article Index : Discuss

Train Drivers’ Strike and the Deteriorating Conditions on the Railways

British Museum Strike Threat

G7 Finance Ministers Meet in Tokyo

Newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
170, Wandsworth Road, London, SW8 2LA. Phone 0207 627 0599
Web Site: http://www.rcpbml.org.uk
e-mail:office@rcpbml.org.uk
Subscription Rates (Cheques made payable to Workers' Publication Centre):
Workers' Weekly Printed Edition: 70p per issue, £2.70 for 4 issues, £17 for 26 issues, £32 for 52 issues (including postage)

Workers' Daily Internet Edition sent by e-mail daily (Text e-mail ): 1 issue free, 6 months £5, Yearly £10



Train Drivers’ Strike and the Deteriorating Conditions on the Railways

Train drivers in the South East successfully held a one-day strike yesterday, January 25. Only one in 10 of the usual number of Connex trains was running. The train drivers’ union ASLEF had been attempting to negotiate a 35-hour week and other improvements to employment conditions but these negotiations broke down, precipitating the ballot which resulted in the industrial action. It was the largest such action in the South East since the signal workers’ dispute six years ago.

One commuter interviewed in the local press said, "It’s been building up for a long time. Connex cannot relate to their staff. They are pernickety about uniforms, dictatorial about small things like what posters can be put up at stations. They are not concerned about improving the quality of the trains. They are just trying to get as much out of people as they can. Although London stations were all extended to take 12 cars some time ago, they are still quite happy to put on short trains on which people are jammed like sardines. This is the lowest trough, even counting British Rail."

It is also reported that the government’s latest rail performance figures, to be published next month, will confirm the deteriorating statistics for many of the mainline train companies which operate into and out of London. The figures, which cover the last three months of 1999, show amongst other things that these services manifested the worst service since privatisation began in the mid 1990s. The punctuality of some services operated by South West Trains is down to 69%. Connex services also operate at around 85% for punctuality. On one day in November there was a total of 90,000 minutes of delays in the southern zone, described by a Railtrack director as "the worst day in my 25-year career on the railways". Five of the largest companies which run rush-hour trains into London have deteriorated in terms of punctuality during the past 12 months.

The chairman of the London Regional Passengers’ Committee, Sir Alan Greengross, said that £25 billion of investment is needed over the next 15 years in the railway infrastructure. He pointed out, "There is also little incentive for the operators to improve standards as the first tranche of contracts are up for renegotiation this year, followed by the other operators in succeeding years, and they are hardly likely to invest millions if someone else is going to be taking over the line."

These figures and comments underline the problem with the rail service. In line with the neo-liberal agenda and the doctrine of privatisation, the rail network has been broken up and handed over to the highest bidders to make the maximum profit. The mantra that competition will result in benefits to the people at large is shown not only to be untrue, but that it has all along been used as a pretext to put the assets of public services at the disposal of the rich so that they can utilise them for the maximum capitalist profit. The other issue here is that the government is no longer prepared to invest in such public services because of the intensification of the crisis, particularly that of the social welfare state and nationalisation. The demands of the financial oligarchy in the present-day situation is not so much for an infrastructure which serves the needs of the national economy but that they need to reverse their falling rate of profit by directly benefiting from privatisation, PFI and PPP.

It is in this context both that the train drivers are taking a stand and also the people as a whole are feeling the brunt of the crisis. They have a common interest in ensuring that the government as the representative of society invests in the economy so that the people’s needs are met.

Article Index


British Museum Strike Threat

Staff at the British Museum are preparing to strike for the first time in the Museum’s 246-year history. This is in response to the managing director’s plans to make up to a tenth of the 900 employees redundant. The redundancies cover all kinds of workers, from carpenters to conservators, from part-time cleaning workers to leading historians. The management is refusing to make the losses voluntary.

The sackings will take place as part of what has been described as a "savage cost-cutting exercise". It is reported that these "savings" will pay for the running costs of the £98 million Great Court development, with an education centre, library, galleries and restaurant.

There is no evidence that the plan is being carried out for the benefit of education, research or for reason of any cultural benefit. It is said that the changes are part of a plan to "streamline" the organisation, a term more usually found when monopolies are sacking workers in what are known as rationalisations or restructuring. Suzanna Taverne, the managing director who was appointed last May, is former director of strategy for the investment bankers, the Pearson group, and is reported to have said on her first day at work that "art and antiquities have not been a particular passion".

Article Index


G7 Finance Ministers Meet in Tokyo

Finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of Seven (G7) states met for a one-day summit in Tokyo on January 23. The G7 group comprises Japan, the US, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada. Russia attended as an observer in sessions directly linked to its economy.

A central topic of the meeting was the relative strengths of the main trading currencies of the dollar, euro and yen. But the communiqué which emerged was said to "paper over their differences" on this question and focused on generalities on what was said to be a brighter global economic outlook. The tone of the statement was that in the background there is concern about which of the big powers economies posed the greatest threat to this supposed global prosperity.

The issue that emerges is that the US, Japan and the European powers are edgy about which bloc is to win out in the contention for global markets and are actually concerned that the global economic outlook will in fact turn into recession, and are also concerned to penetrate each other’s economies. This leads to the apparently paradoxical situation that the US is stressing the need for "recovery" in both the European and the Japanese economies, at the same time emphasising the need for "structural change", in other words that government intervention is kept to a minimum and that free-market forces be unfettered, and the labour market made "flexible". This is said to be securing a more "balanced" pattern of growth. According to news reports, US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said he had been encouraged by indications from Japan that it is committed to demand-led growth and to avoiding deflationary pressures.

The US did not get its way in wanting the G7 ministers to call for a recovery in the euro, whose weakness is boosting European exports to the US. The European powers are also concerned that someone from Europe should be the next head of the IMF when the present Managing Director, Michel Camdessus, steps down in February after holding the post for 13 years. Japan in particular is unhappy with this plan. By convention, Western Europe gets the top spot at the IMF while the US chooses the head of the World Bank. One name floated for the post was that of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while others include Bank of England Deputy Governor Mervyn King, head of the Bank of International Settlements Andrew Crockett, as well as former Finance Minister Kenneth Clark.

Article Index


RCPB(ML) Home Page

Workers' Daily Internet Edition Index Page