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'Sack SeaContainers, not GNER workers,' says RMT as crisis bites

Publication Date: October 16 2006

THE GOVERNMENT should take the GNER franchise back in-house to protect jobs and rail services, Britain’s biggest rail union said today.

As SeaContainers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the USA, RMT, which represents more than 1,500 of GNER's 3,000 staff, today urged the government to block any sacrifice of GNER jobs.

"Our first priority remains to ensure that our members' jobs and the services they provide are not sacrificed simply to enable a privateer based in Bermuda to dig itself out its financial crisis," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

"We will resist redundancies with every means at our disposal, but ministers have the power to ensure that GNER is not used as a cash cow to be milked to bail out SeaContainers.

"It would be nothing short of obscene if the government allowed GNER to make our members pay with their jobs for SeaContrainers' financial crisis.

"Shareholders are always more than happy to draw their dividends when everything is rosy, but when things go wrong it is always the people who do the work who are lined up to pay the price.

 "If anyone is to be sacked it should be SeaContainers, not GNER staff, and for the sake of our members' jobs and the future of the services they provide, the government should bring the franchise back in-house before any more damage is done," Bob Crow said.