Union vows to fight rail cuts

Press, 2 May 1984, Page 6

Union vows to fight rail cuts

The National Union of Railwaymen yesterday threatened to fight proposed staff cuts on the Christchurch - Picton line and to step up its campaign of stop-work meetings. Meetings throughout New Zealand had been already arranged to discuss the Booz-Allen report but the union’s general secretary, Mr Don Goodfellow, said in Wellington that the programme might be accelerated. Perhaps two would be held each day. The warning was delivered in reaction to proposed timetabling changes for freight trains on the South Island northern line which will mean the loss of 30 jobs. Railways’ district traffic manager, Mr Robert Taylor, announced on Monday that the 59 weekly services on the route would be cut to 53 on May 20. The plan is to co-ordinate with rail ferry sailings to provide a more efficient inter-island service. Mr Taylor said that the move was the first part of an over-all freight review and was aimed at gaining maximum advantage from the ferry timetable introduced in March. An over-night week-day freight service in both directions between Christchurch and Wellington might be expected under the new regime, he said. The move was “an absolute must” if the corporation was to hold its own against competition from road transport and other sea operators. Mr Taylor said that the

new timetable would mean a reduction of 48 staff but that, because there were vacancies to be filled, the actual number of jobs lost would be 30. He hoped that this might be achieved without forcibly laying off workers. The railways had a high rate of natural attrition and.it was likely that the balance could be made up with voluntary redundancies. He said that it would be “some months” before changes to staffing levels were made as those affected had “a large amount of leave outstanding” which they would take some time to work off. No-one would be told “Look, you are finished this week,” he said. However, union officials at local and national level are incensed at the way the matter is being handled. Both Mr Goodfellow and the Canterbury branch secretary, Mr Paul Corliss, said yesterday that they first heard of the threatened redundancies through the news media. “It came as a bolt from the blue,” Mr Goodfellow said. “We had been receiving assurances that they were nowhere near that stage.” The N.U.R. has, since the Booz-Allen report was released, been trying to win an exemption from the wage freeze regulations to implement its recommendations; the right to negotiate compensation levels. Mr Goodfellow said that if the union accepted layoffs on the ChristchurchPicton line it would weaken

its position on the wider redundancy issue. “We are not going to let them do a dummy run down there because it is not a part of the restructuring proposed in the report,” he said. “We say it is part of the report and we will act accordingly.”

The union would not agree to the redundancies. Instead, it would step up its campaign of stop-work meetings until management started “to feel some of the pain,” Mr Goodfellow said. Three branches — Canterbury, Kaikoura and Blenheim — will be affected by the changes but Mr Goodfellow said that the meetings might not be held in these areas. They might take place in the North Island instead. Mr Taylor said that the union had been informed of the proposed timetable changes as early as November 16 last year. Asked if the possibility of job cuts had been raised either then or later, he said: “It is more than I can comment on because I only took up this post in February, but I would not think so. In fact, I am pretty sure that it would not have been.” He said that if the union disrupted services it would be the Railways cause and its own no good because customers would go elsewhere and once they had gone it was hard to win them back again. Reduced freight would mean fewer jobs in the long term, he said.