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Trevor Dobbyn of the rail, bus and tram union in Australia and Juhani Koivunen of the Finnish transport workers union AKT, compare notes on privately run public transport, foreign companies and trade union strategy.

Tell us about the state of your services

Trevor Dobbyn: In Melbourne in March 1997 we had a train and tram strike, over the issue of the terms and conditions under which privatisation might proceed. After this the then ultraconservative state government in Victoria made a decision to privatise the whole of the public transport system and to amputate what it saw as the dead hand of the public service. It promised to take the then Public Transport Union (now RBTU) apart “piece by piece”.

In August 1999 the tram, train and bus networks were handed over to the private companies that had successfully bid for the various business packages. The train and tram passenger companies were divided into five franchised businesses. The buses were packaged separately, as were the rolling stock, maintenance and infrastructure maintenance businesses.

Juhani Koivunen: Traditionally in Finland, public bus transport, including local transport, has been taken care of by private bus companies. Only three cities – Helsinki, Turku and Tampere – use publicly run transport. Privatisation, in the general sense of the word, has not occurred in Finland. Competitive bidding on the other hand, is an issue of greater significance. This became compulsory in public procurement, including bus services, after Finland became a member of the EU. And this has caused many problems for employees – though passengers have not really been affected.

Dobbyn: Our passengers have been directly hit by the lack of staff on the passenger rail networks. Most of the cutbacks occurred before privatisation, with the state government slashing thousands of jobs out of the system, cutting services and closing lines.

Since privatisation, staff numbers in general have climbed slowly upwards as the new companies simply do not have enough staff to deliver any decent standard of customer service or to prevent fare evasion or vandalism, which has spiralled out of control.

Koivunen: Rail transport in Finland is run by a state-owned company, but the debate on the opening of regional rail traffic within the Helsinki Metropolitan area has begun. The present Minister of Transport and Communication is particularly eager to open the market for competition. So far he has not succeeded in winning enough support for his ideas.

How would you illustrate your union’s experience of the private sector?

Dobbyn: In the train and tram businesses, as a result of a long industrial campaign, we won the right for our membership to transfer all accrued entitlements and conditions from the public to the private sector. Since that time our membership has grown and our enterprise agreements have delivered improved wages and conditions. Our membership overall in rail and tram is fairly happy with the way our union has handled the issues around privatisation.

In contrast to this, bus privatisation has been a disaster for public transport workers in Australia. Unfortunately the RBTU at the time of privatisation had no constitutional coverage of private bus workers so we had no control of the agreements reached with the new owners.

Wages plummeted, conditions were cut and union membership went into a downward spiral. Since privatisation our former bus members have seen a widening of the gap between their conditions and those of our remaining members in the tram and rail businesses. The contrast could not have been sharper.

Koivunen: Our present collective agreement is about to expire (January 2003). The negative effects of the tender process will be one of the major issues for negotiation of the new collective agreement. Perhaps the most important issue is long working days.

As competitive bidding has continued, many of the benefits based on agreements within the particular company have disappeared, and this of course has had an adverse effect on working conditions.

For example, schedules have been tightened, work-related stress has increased, and the situation with restrooms and other facilities for the employees has deteriorated.

Meanwhile the bidding process has created insecurity over the continuity of employment contracts, as the contract may well be threatened during the competitive bidding rounds.

After a one-week strike on this issue we secured an agreement whereby the winner of a bid must fill any vacancies with drivers employed by the losing contractor.

How are you coping with new and foreign companies coming into your sector?

Dobbyn: In rail and tram our relationship with the 30 plus new companies with whom we have agreements has varied. National Express, which is the largest company in the industry covering the two rail businesses and one of the tram businesses, has been a problem for us from day one.

They seem to have believed that they could roll into town and bowl the union over and knock off our wages and conditions along the way. And they become increasingly annoyed when this proves not to be the case. We have had a number of disputes with National Express and will continue to do so until they finally get the message that they have to deal with the union in a reasonable way.

Most of the other companies have behaved themselves most of the time, although we had a dispute with (French-owned) Connex over staff cuts caused by their budgetary problems, arising from the franchise arrangements agreed to at the time of the handover.

But we are now forced to deal with a range of multinational outfits from the US, Britain, France and Germany, not to mention our own home-grown capitalists and would-be multi-nationals – they all need watching and are all dangerous when their bottom line comes under pressure. So far none of them have got on top of us, and we have surrendered nothing to them.

Koivunen: We too have had problems with Connex, which is no longer a very attractive employer to drivers in Finland. Our members within Connex have had major concerns over working time. Working days vary from short ones of four hours to very long days of 14 hours. Employers have decreased the time reserved for drivers for their duties, both in the beginning and at the end of their working day. In fact, drivers say they are not able to do all their tasks during those decreased times.
There have been other problems in addition to working time. In one case, for example, we have been to court over the dismissal of a shop steward.

We are told that Connex has failed to keep workers’ representatives informed about pertinent developments in the company. Yet the employers deliberately protract any negotiations on issues that employees request. Instead of cooperating with the union, the employers have tried to weaken its position.

What is the next challenge for your union?

Dobbyn: The privatisation process has been completed in Victoria, but the state government has conceded some of the failures of the current system and has decided to take more direct control of fares and service levels. It is also planning to reverse some of the break-up of the networks by reducing the number of franchises that come up for grabs when re-tendering happens in 2004.

However we will be expecting pressure for further privatisation in the event that the political climate changes in the other states. Then conservative governments might emerge with privatisation policies that threaten public ownership.

Koivunen: In Finland we need to intensify our work to fight the negative consequences of competitive bidding. As a first step, we should make sure that the EU Directive on transfer of undertakings will, without fail, also cover the situations created by competitive bidding. Moreover, we need additional European rules to protect employees better from the consequences of competitive bidding.

Meantime, we will be continuing our work to improve restrooms and other facilities (particularly at the end stops) for employees.

Dobbyn: The Victoria branch of our union has a number of objectives in sight. First is to continue to increase our membership – to reverse the decline suffered under public ownership. Second we aim to further improve our members’ wages, conditions and job security. Third we will work to ensure the return of the state Labour government, which has committed around $1.3 billion to rail and tram infrastructure and continues to offer a high level of consultation with our union.

We are continuing to see a culture shift in the union as our traditional public sector world view and style of operation is replaced by sharper and harder responses, which more closely mirror the privatised free market environment we are now in.

Part of this culture shift in the union has seen us take a more commercial attitude on financial matters and has given us a greater focus on our bottom line. We have seen a turnaround in our finances and we now run surplus budgets as a result.

What do you want from the ITF?

Koivunen: For the AKT, the main role of the ITF, at least now, is probably to provide us with information about the experiences of affiliated unions all over the world. From the point of view of our union, the ETF plays a more central role at this stage, because of the common EU legislation affecting the membership.

Dobbyn: The ITF has been increasingly important to the RBTU as we cope with the globalisation of our industry. The support we received during our recent dispute with Connex was critical to the morale of our members and really unnerved Connex. It seems our new bosses are all in favour of globalising capital but dead against us doing the same with labour!

Not that it’s just a one-way street, as we recently offered our support to the US Teamsters union in their dispute with National Express – a development that caused great alarm among National Express management here. We are now more aware than ever of the need to develop connections with international unions through the ITF.

Juhani Koivunen is Secretary of the AKT in Finland. Trevor Dobbyn is Victoria Branch Secretary of the RBTU in Australia.