Article: Plain train talk from ex-union boss

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Plain train talk from ex-union boss

Plain train talk from ex-union boss
May 18, 2011

Former union chief Jim Paterson has his own take on how to fix Melbourne's ailing train network.

'Nothing changes,'' says Jim Paterson gruffly, standing in the rain on a platform at Ringwood railway station. A platform announcement had just advised passengers that the ''Belgrave train will be late''. Says Paterson: ''How bloody late? When can you possibly get on this train?''

Paterson was once top dog in the Victorian train drivers' union, the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen, and has returned to live in Melbourne after 22 years - just in time to witness the so-called ''biggest shake-up in a decade'' on the Melbourne tracks.

Is he impressed? ''The only poor bastards travelling by train must have no alternative methods of transport,'' he says. ''This is what used to frustrate me. The system runs trains for itself, not for the people. It has always done that. It seems to be an endemic disease in public transport administration. Like some of the banks. The staff is taught eye aversion.''

Around us, damp passengers huddle miserably in pockets. ''There was a woman in a tube-controlled wheelchair here yesterday going along the platform in the rain to get under shelter,'' says Paterson. ''It's worse at East Ringwood. There are shelters here for the bus passengers at the back of the station. The bus companies should run the railways.''

Paterson drove Melbourne trains from 1964 to 1984, becoming state president, then state secretary of the AFULE and taking on the socialist comrades who controlled the executive. ''I brought in a rule that when the members went on strike, the union officials didn't get paid. And the other rule I brought in was that all officials kept driving trains.''

Eventually he was hired as an adviser by the Victorian Transport Ministry under Steve Crabb and his old union disappeared. ''There's still an AFULE in Queensland. But Victoria's got swallowed up in the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, part of the big [Bill] Kelty super-union amalgamation which created a career path for aspiring bloody academics. Very few union officials now have come off the tools.''

So what's the fix for Melbourne's trains?

''We can't have double-deckers here because of the bridges,'' says Paterson, ''but we can lengthen the trains. That means more carriages. And - although you can't do it on all lines - they could put in a third line signalled to the city in the morning, out of the city in the afternoon. You could intersperse them in and out of the station platforms. I don't think the public would mind as long as they caught a bloody train.

''If you analyse it in the time since I was there, after all the billions of dollars, the only change has been the colour of the trains, the stations and uniforms of the staff.

''In my day, we ran eight-car Harris sets. They currently use six ... There is less seating and for people from the outer suburbs, it's a long way to stand.

''Another thing - you are now getting panhandled at railway stations. People wanting money, cigarettes, druggies approaching you. I can't remember much of that. Night-time security is important but it would be nice to have daytime security.

''You can't have long-term results out of short-term decisions. It is all tied to the electoral cycle. Three years, four years for a government, how the hell can you plan and implement?''

After Paterson left the government, he lived in Queensland, teaching industrial relations for the Queensland Chamber of Commerce and National Safety Council, then went on assignment for Rio Tinto in Borneo. But he has kept the keen interest in railways that he has had since his youth.

''We grew up in Warragul and I used to climb the back fence to the railway line and pick up the coal that dropped off the steam engines. The drivers used to get the firemen to throw a couple of shovels of coal off for me. I'd drag it up the bank, over the back fence for Mum.''

Paterson was aged 11 when his father died of kidney failure, leaving him as the man of the house. ''Dad had been brought out from Scotland with the new plant equipment for Millers rope and twine factory there,'' he says.

The young Paterson left school at 14 to become an apprentice baker but switched to the trains. He says that, if the AFULE were still in the Victorian driver's cabin, the Bracks and Brumby governments would have had a fight on their hands. ''We would have taken them on for running down the service. I don't think Terry Mulder [Transport Minister] and Metro realise what they are facing. They are dealing with a monolith, a dinosaur.''

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/melbourne-life/plain-train-talk-from-exunion-boss-20110517-1erb3.html

[#Metro]

''If you analyse it in the time since I was there, after all the billions of dollars, the only change has been the colour of the trains, the stations and uniforms of the staff.

Sounds awfully familiar to another place I know...

[somebody]

''If you analyse it in the time since I was there, after all the billions of dollars, the only change has been the colour of the trains, the stations and uniforms of the staff.

Sounds awfully familiar to another place I know...

And one I know.  Although that place has significantly slower and also less frequent trains than previously.