Union dismayed at size of Tranz Rail cuts

The union representing rail workers is shocked at Tranz Rail's plans to cut 3400 jobs as it quits long-distance passenger services and contracts out work.

Announcing its restructuring yesterday, the company said it would reduce its workforce from 4000 to 600 in two years.

Rail and Maritime Transport Union general secretary Wayne Butson said workers were shocked by the magnitude of the change.

"We didn't expect 3400 staff to be told they would no longer be working for Tranz Rail," he said.

The company said there would be no mass redundancies as it expected most staff would be picked up by new contractors.

New managing director Michael Beard said: "Workers will not be sent into a black hole."

Tranz Rail held the first of several meetings with unions yesterday and said workers' terms of employment would be retained when passenger and some freight services were sold.

Tranz Rail chairman Robert Wheeler said the long-distance passenger services and refrigerated freight would be sold, and infrastructure, engineering and maintenance, terminal operations and ship operations would be contracted out.

The union condemned these moves, which it described as the closing chapter in the privatisation of the rail system in NZ and the final nail in former Railways Minister Richard Prebble's "Save Rail" coffin being driven home.

"Rail workers will see this as yet another insult for their long-term commitment and loyalty to rail," the union said last night.

Mr Butson said splintering off the assets of rail would see the demise of railways as a regional development option. New Zealand would join the ranks of overseas railways with multiple operators sharing the same corridors, which had been cited as a problem in the rail accidents at Paddington, London, and Glenbrook, Sydney.

He said the union's national management committee reiterated at a meeting yesterday that it was committed to fight if necessary to protect the new terms and conditions of employment, including redundancy and employment transfer provisions of rail workers.

"While the assets are being put up for sale the conditions of rail workers are not."