Rail workers in Luxembourg rally for public services and secure jobs

European transport workers expressed their anger over the liberalisation of the railways and its impact on public services and jobs at a rally in Luxembourg last week.

Some 375 unionists representing transport unions in Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg joined forces under the banner of the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF), the European arm of the ITF. The rally - part of the ETF’s European railway workers’ action day, a key campaign running under the auspices of the ITF global railway action day on 13 April - was calling for an end to liberalisation. This, the unionists said, was responsible for deteriorating public services and a lack of job security. Earlier that day, Luxembourg union representatives distributed some 3000 flyers on the issue at the central railway station. A delegation of union leaders also met with the minister of development and infrastructure, Claude Wiseler, to send home the anti-liberalisation message.

Other activities taking place as part of ITF railway action day included: a seminar organised by an Indian railway union focusing on safety on the Indian railways, attended by more than 400 delegates and discussions on health and safety with railway commuters and the distribution of pamphlets to passengers by a Zimbabwean union. Meanwhile, in Brazil, unionists wearing yellow ITF vests marked the action day by handing out campaign material in the station in Rio de Janeiro and in New Zealand, activists took to the streets of Wellington and a small town in the Taranaki region to gather signatures for a petition to save a railway line facing closure or mothballing.

Mac Urata, ITF inland transport section secretary, commented: “During this action day railway workers - men and women, young and old working in passenger and freight - delivered the message that strong unions play an important role in fighting privatisation, liberalisation and restructuring and in promoting the railways as a safe, sustainable and important mode of transport."