International Trade Union Cooperation BRIEFING PAPERS N° 4/ 2007 responsible: rudolf traub-merz Global Trade Union Program www.fes.de/gewerkschaften THE WORLD BANK, RAILWAYS PRIVATISATION and TRADES UNIONS By Brendan Martin 1. Introduction Since privatisation began to spread around the globe in the early 1990s, railway employment in the global South has contracted on an enormous scale, and many of the remaining jobs have become more precarious. But railway jobs have been lost too, and terms and conditions of work have deteriorated, in many countries in which railway privatisation has not taken place. Moreover, the industry has continued to decline in many countries that have not privatised, as well as in others that have done so. The lesson of experience for unions appears to be that privatisation per se is not the fundamental problem. Rather, unions confronting railway restruc­turing must focus on two inter-connected sets of issues: the role of rail in sustainable economic and social development; and the jobs, rights and em­ployment terms and conditions of railway workers. Although those two sets of issues are clearly inter­connected, and require unions to think about the future of the industry strategically, each has demands of its own. It is not only understandable but essential that unions – because of their capacity constraints, especially in developing countries – give priority to organising and representing their members. At na­tional level, many unions barely have sufficient strength to secure decent severance terms for their members when mass retrenchments take place, and little capacity to attempt influence over the policies that guide such restructuring. It is here that the role of global union federations (GUFs), such as the International Transport Workers‘ Federation(ITF), can be so important. Increasingly, the organising role of the ITF will extend to mirror the increasingly international scope of employers: cross border ownership of railways is already a reali­ty in parts of Latin America and Africa, for examples, following privatisation. However, in addition to dealing with the effects of that trend, unions must grapple with the governmental and corporate de­cisions that are driving it on a global scale. Railway restructuring is being driven not only by general economic and social trends, but also more delibera­tely by international institutions, such as the World Bank, that both respond and contribute to those trends. Therefore, further important roles for ITF are to research and analyse the roles of international institutions in shaping railway restructuring, and its effects on workers and their unions; to represent the concerns and interests of railway workers at that