Driving away rail clients

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 12

Driving away rail clients

New Zealanders have become hardened to the likelihood of interruptions to the Railways’ services across Cook Strait at holiday times. This Easter, passengers have continued to move freely, but hundreds of railway waggons, some of them carrying valuable and perishable exports, have been held up on the South Island side of the strait. Freight will probably be moving again by Thursday. Some of the perishable cargo may be salvaged. The ban on moving freight at Picton has still lasted for almost a week and its repercussions are going to be felt for a good deal longer. The dispute between the management of the Railways Corporation and members of the National Union of Railwaymen in Picton and Blenheim, can do no good to either side. The corporation is facing the stern task of attempting to run the railways without the losses of the past, and in competition with other forms of transport. The union, along with all railway staff, has assumed the job of persuading the corporation that extensive staff cuts are not needed to enable the system to break even. Both sides depend on the ability of the railway system to show the kind of efficiency and economy that will attract and retain customers. The performance at Picton in the last few days can only encourage customers, especially those with perishable cargoes, to take their business elsewhere. The disagreement about rosters for the holiday period that led to the stoppage hardly

looks, to outsiders, like grounds for bringing inconvenience and losses to the Railways’ customers. The corporation, keen to reduce its overheads, may have pared down the number of staff required to work at higher pay rates during a holiday, a time when freight traffic might well be less than normal. The N.U.R. maintains that normal staff levels are needed, perhaps in part because it wants to ensure holiday penal pay for as many of its members as possible. Behind these attitudes must lie a belief by Railways management that fewer staff are going to have to do the work all year round if the system is to stop losing money; and a determination by the union to show that the Railways need as many staff as possible if the system is to work. This approach might make sense if the system still enjoyed a degree of monopoly on the long-distance haulage of freight, or if there could still be an ultimate recourse to the taxpayers to meet losses incurred by uneconomic operations. Instead, the system now has to make its own way, and pay its own way. Handling freight across Cook Strait is central to its success. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the particular case, a dispute such as that of the last few days can only hasten the decline of the Railways and the loss of jobs that the unions fear. Those with freight caught up in the dispute may be losers; the country as a whole suffers from any loss of exports; the biggest losers are still likely to be the staff of the Railways.