Rescaling employment relations: key outcomes of ...

Environment and Planning A 2008, volume 40, pages 1347 ^ 1369

DOI:10.1068/a39203

Rescaling employment relations: key outcomes of change in the privatised rail industry Danny MacKinnon

Department of Geography & Environment, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen, Elphinstone Road, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, Scotland; e-mail: [email protected]

Andrew Cumbers

Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland; e-mail: [email protected]

Jon Shaw

School of Geography, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, England; e-mail: [email protected] Received 9 June 2006; in revised form 20 October 2006; published online 29 August 2007

Abstract. The past decade has witnessed a revival of interest in the role of labour in political and economic restructuring. Following a period in the 1980s and early 1990s when trade unions and employees were routinely portrayed as passive victims of corporate restructuring, the past ten years have seen a resurgence of work by geographers highlighting the continued agency of labour. Despite this `new labour geography', however, there has been little empirical research examining the uneven development of employment relations at a broad industry level. We address this issue by examining the changing geography of employment regulation in the UK's privatised rail industry. A major shift in the scale at which industrial relations are organised has taken place under privatisation, away from national collective bargaining to a system of localised company bargaining. On the basis of secondary data gathered from industry sources, we provide an initial assessment of key outcomes of employment change in the rail industry. Our analysis indicates that considerable disparities in pay and conditions exist between different groups of workers, companies, and regions, although these are perhaps less extreme than suggested by the unions. In addition, the number of industrial disputes has escalated in the aftermath of privatisation. Moreover, instead of the set piece national strikes that took place in the nationalised industry, the majority of this strike action has been conducted against particular operators at the local and regional scales, reflecting the logic of company-level bargaining. At the same time, the membership of the three main unions has actually increased in recent years against a backdrop of long-term decline, suggesting that the decentralisation of collective bargaining presents unions with opportunities as well as challenges.

1 Introduction The emergence of more flexible and contingent forms of employment has been a key outcome of wider processes of economic restructuring in recent decades, often framed in terms of increased globalisation and the collapse of the Fordist production system that characterised the postwar era (Herod et al, 2003; Rutherford and Gertler, 2002). Neoliberal policies of market liberalisation and deregulation have been an important influence on the restructuring of employment relations through the removal of certain statutory controls and norms, the introduction of constraints on trade-union activity, and the privatisation and contracting out of state-owned enterprises and services. Most academic and media commentators have interpreted these changes as resulting in a shift in the balance of power towards capital at the expense of labour (see Du Gay, 1996; Herod, 2000; Sennett, 1998). In practice, however, it is becoming apparent that employment relations are more complex and fluid, with recent research highlighting the uneven development of employment relations across different sectors and spaces (Herod et al, 2003; Rutherford and Gertler, 2002).

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D MacKinnon, A Cumbers, J Shaw

Within geography, a substantial literature has developed over the past decade which emphasises the active role of labour in shaping the economic landscape. This `new labour geography' (Herod, 2001) has focused on the problems of organised labour or the trade-union movement in confronting the changed circumstances of advanced global capitalism in the 1990s and beyond. An important aspect of employment change is the rescaling of industrial relations, with established national-level structures giving way to an array of locally and regionally specific arrangements. Research on union responses has examined the development of new spatial strategies to deal with mobile capital and efforts to renew organisational spaces and structures (Cumbers, 2005; Wills and Waterman, 2001). Much of this work has focused on certain highprofile initiatives and campaigns (eg Castree, 2000; Wills, 2005), and there is a need for more empirically grounded research that explores the role of labour in shaping processes of employment change within particular industries and sectors. Such research should not only assess the strategies and practices of organised labour, but should also examine workers' ongoing engagement with management in the workplace, labour market, and industry. Informed by the `new labour geography', our approach in this paper is to recognise that employment restructuring is a socially embedded process of negotiation and dialogue between management and labour (Amoore, 2002). Rather than privileging either group, we view the relationship between labour and capital as a ``co-dependent one of cooperation and conflict'' (Castree et al, 2004, page 30). In empirical terms, the paper focuses on the impact of privatisation on labour relations in the UK rail industry. The rail sector provides an appropriate context for examining processes of employment change as a heavily unionised industry with a distinctive industrial culture that has been subject to a far-reaching process of reorganisation through privatisation aimed, in part, at reducing the power of unions and restoring employers' `right to manage' (Haubrich, 2001; Pendleton, 1999; Strangleman, 2004). Such reorganisation has involved a major rescaling of employment relations, away from national collective bargaining to a system of localised pattern bargaining at the company level (Holmes, 2004). Whilst industrial relations were never static in the nationalised rail industry, privatisation promised dramatic changes as a single state-owned company was replaced by a large number of businesses operating across different spatial scales. On the basis of secondary data gathered from industry sources, we provide an initial assessment of key outcomes of employment change in the rail industry, focusing particularly on disparities in pay and conditions, and changing patterns of industrial action.(1) Our analysis indicates that significant disparities in pay and conditions exist between different groups of workers, companies, and regions; and the number of industrial disputes has escalated in the aftermath of privatisation. Instead of the set piece national strikes that took place in the nationalised industry, the majority of this strike action has been conducted against particular operators at the local and regional scales, reflecting the logic of company-level bargaining. Subsequent papers will build on this preliminary analysis by investigating processes of employment restructuring, particularly in terms of the actual strategies and approaches adopted by employers and unions, drawing on detailed interviews with company managers and union officials and activists. (1) The two main sources are the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) Pay and Conditions database, which the authors were granted access to, and a database of strike action in the privatised rail industry compiled by the authors. The latter was compiled from several different industry publications, principally Rail and Rail Business Intelligence, supplemented by trade union press releases and reports in the mainstream media (BBC News, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph).

Rescaling employment relations in the privatised rail industry

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This paper is comprised of seven main sections. In the next section, we assess the general relationships between labour, the rescaling of employment relations, and privatisation. Section 3 focuses on the privatised rail industry, outlining its basic structure and identifying the main actors. This is followed by an account of the process of rescaling in the industry. The two main empirical sections of the paper focus on disparities in pay and conditions and patterns of industrial action, respectively, viewing these as key outcomes of privatisation and the rescaling of employment relations. In conclusion, we summarise these key outcomes and make some broader observations about the process of rescaling and the implications of our analysis for organised labour. 2 Labour geographies, rescaling, and privatisation Our starting point here is the `new labour geography' (Herod, 1997), of which three key strands can be identified (Sadler, 2000, page 136 ^ 138): (1) the geographies of union organisation and renewal, particularly in the advanced industrial economies, in the context of long-term decline (Cumbers, 2005; Pike et al, 2003; Sadler, 2000; Wills, 2001); (2) the changing multiscalar landscape of union activism, emphasising innovative spatial strategies at local, national, and international scales to defend and protect worker interests in particular campaigns (Castree, 2000; Herod, 2001; Holmes, 2004; Jonas, 1998; Sadler, 2004; Walsh, 2000). (3) the prospects for the development of a new labour internationalism as a means of securing greater global social justice and labour standards (eg Cumbers, 2004; Herod, 1997; Wills and Waterman, 2001) Unions represent the main object of analysis in terms of their ìnternal' organisational structures and strategies, with rather less attention being paid to labour's èxternal' relations with employers at a range of spatial scales ö principally, the workplace, labour-market, and industry levels (Rutherford and Gertler, 2002). A key theme of recent research in labour geography is the rescaling of industrial relations, involving a shift away from national systems of collective bargaining to plant-level agreements, together with union attempts to ùpscale' negotiations to the supranational level and grassroots efforts to forge translocal connections between groups of workers in different locations (Herod et al, 2003). National collective bargaining has traditionally been viewed by unions as an essential means of taking wages out of competition across whole sectors or companies (Holmes, 2004). As such, it was a key part of labour's spatial praxis between the 1930s and the 1970s (Herod, 2001), becoming institutionalised within the Fordist regime of accumulation that structured this period. Since the early 1980s, however, a widespread decentralisation of bargaining arrangements has taken place as employers and governments have sought to create more flexible labour markets, capitalising on the uneven geography of labour in terms of wages, skills, conditions, and practices (Herod et al, 2003, page 185). Such decentralisation has been a partial and uneven process, with the national scale remaining important in terms of the regulation of labour and employment relations (Rutherford and Gertler, 2002). Rather than existing as pregiven units which capital and labour can move or `jump' between in an unproblematic fashion, it is important to stress that particular geographical scales such as the local, national, or supranational are socially produced through the spatial strategies of these different social groups and actors (Herod, 2001; Sadler, 2000). This means that no particular scale should be granted ontological priority: highlighting, instead, the relational significance of scale in terms of the connections and alliances forged by capital and labour (see Cox, 1998). In recent years,

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the scale at which labour relations are constituted and regulated has been the object of considerable struggle (Sadler, 2000, page 142). Efforts to upscale bargaining to the national and, increasingly, supranational levels remains a central aspect of union strategy, aiming to counter the superior spatial mobility and reach of capital. Whilst certain groups of workers can gain from decentralised bargaining, the very unevenness of such gains reinforces the importance of upscalingönot least in terms of generating a minimum set of regulatory conditions from which local actors may be able to strike better deals. In general terms, the shift towards decentralised and localised employment relations is usually interpreted as a setback for unions, although in practice outcomes will be uneven across space, reflecting different local labour-market circumstances. In this respect, we would concur with Teague that the ``regionalization of industrial relations ... in Europe is not necessarily advantageous for either labour or capital. Although it may lessen labour's bargaining power, uncoordinated bargaining for firms could also lead to increased wage settlements as firms attempt to recruit and retain workers'' (1995, page 155, quoted by Rutherford and Gertler, 2002, page 198). A logical consequence of decentralised bargaining is a growing divergence in pay and conditions between workers employed by different companies, eroding any notion of industry-wide pay rates and employment conditions. Yet, whilst employers may be able to extract considerable concessions from workforces in areas of high unemployment, the balance of power will be more favourable to unions in tight local labour-market conditions. Our empirical focus on the privatised rail industry requires that we consider the relationship between privatisation and the rescaling of collective bargaining. In essence, privatisation is the transfer of at least part of the operations of a state-owned enterprise to private ownership or control (Heald, 1983). It can be accomplished in numerous different ways, although the three most practised have been: denationalisation, which involves the direct sale of public assets; contracting out, where the production of state-financed goods and services is franchised to private firms, usually for a finite period; and liberalisation, which requires the abolition of statutory monopoly to promote competition in markets previously characterised by restricted entry. There is no inherent link between privatisation per se and rescaling, although this is not to deny the broader connections between rescaling and neoliberalism more generally (Peck, 1998). Rather, it is the interaction between particular forms of privatisation and preexisting institutional spaces that results in rescaling. As Peck (1998, page 29) argues, in another context, rescaling is `à dynamic process in which (national) regulatory tendencies and local institutional outcomes mould one another in a dialectical fashion.'' In the case of the rail industry, it was the preexisting organisational divisions of British Rail (BR), structured geographically into different bundles of routes, that provided the institutional template upon which rescaling took place. The geography of rail privatisation was also shaped by the Conservative government's localist ideology, based on a highly romanticised conception of local leadership and entrepreneurship which invoked Victorian-era values (Kearns, 1995). This localist ideology informed the broader project of undoing the corporatist structures created at the national and regional scales in the postwar period (Peck, 1995). Drawing upon insights from the labour geography literature, both rail privatisation and the decentralisation of collective bargaining can be seen as uneven and contested processes which leave labour scope to shape the emerging employment landscape. In this respect, it is worth noting that `privatisation' itself has varied widely in different national contexts, with many countries undergoing much more selective and partial privatisation processes than the UK, partly as a result of more effective trade union


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and social democratic opposition to neoliberalism. As with rescaling processes in general, the outcomes of privatisation and liberalisation can be ambiguous for unions. On the one hand, job losses have been widespread (Tickell, 1998) and studies have shown a generalised deterioration in working conditions across sectors (Hall and Lobina, 1999; Newberry and Pollitt, 1997; Ogden, 1994). This has been especially pronounced in situations where work has been outsourced to subcontractors or agencies and existing pay and conditions (such as pension entitlements) have not been transferred (Hall and Lobina, 1999). On the other hand, the increasing polarisation of wages and growing mass of low-paid workers in the service sector could provide a fertile recruiting ground for unions if they adopt the appropriate organising strategies around a broader social justice campaign (see Wills, 2005). In particular, growing disparities in pay and conditions between different groups of workers in the same industries and workplaces provide an issue around which unions can mobilise and recruit. One factor shaping the responses of labour to privatisation and liberalisation processes will be preexisting differences in the strength of union organisation and culture at the local and regional scales. For example, Wills's (1996) work on union organising in the banking sector reveals marked spatial variations in activity, reflecting what she terms ùneven reserves' between regions. These, in turn, reflect the variegated landscape of union organisation created by past processes of uneven development (Massey, 1984). In regions with a history of mass industrialisation and strong trade union organisation, efforts to organise in new growth sectors are often more successful because of residual traditions of labourism and trade-union activism that filter down through generations (Sadler and Thompson, 2001). In contrast, regions and local labour markets without such traditions and experiences often have much weaker union reserves. Yet, since our focus is on the employment outcomes of privatisation and rescaling processes, rather than union activity per se, the influence of regional traditions of unionism may be outweighed by broader labour-market conditions. 3 The privatised rail industry in the UK The privatisation of BR followed the sales of numerous nationalised British transport concerns in the 1980s, including British Airways, the British Airports Authority, the National Freight Corporation, the long-distance coach industry, local bus services, and ferries. Following a protracted and contested episode of policy formulation, ministers adopted a complex, `vertically separated' structure for the railway industry (Shaw, 2000). This involved splitting BR along functional lines, detaching its infrastructure business from its train-operating activities (Charlton et al, 1997). Control of the rail infrastructure passed to Railtrack, which became responsible for the safety, maintenance, and renewal of the railway network. Railtrack was also charged with coordinating train movements and, subject to the Regulator's approval, granting train operators access to the track. BR's operations business was divided into around ninety separate companies which can be placed into six groups on the basis of their activities. At the time of privatisation (1995 ^ 97), these were: 25 train operating companies (TOCs), franchised on the basis of competitive tender, providing passenger rail services; 7 freight companies: five were sold to a business consortium led by Wisconsin Central Transportation, now trading as English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS); Red Star Parcels and Freightliner were sold to management buy-out teams; 3 rolling stock companies (Roscos) established to lease rolling stock and locomotives to the TOCs;

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20 British Rail infrastructure services (BRIS) concerned with the maintenance of track and signalling established initially on a regional basis; 7 rail maintenance businesses to undertake the heavy overhaul of rolling stock and locomotives; 27 central companies providing general support services to the industry, such as telecommunications, consultancy, and research. The regulatory framework within which the industry operates initially comprised the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) and the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF). Health and safety issues were subject to the control of the Rail Inspectorate (HMRI). As part of its bid to promote itself as business friendly, the Labour government left the structure of the privatised railways largely intact after taking office in 1997 (Shaw and Farrington, 2003), although a number of initiatives have since been introduced. Two key reforms are worth highlighting as they have increased the state's direct interest in the industry. Whilst both of these movements could be interpreted as movements towards `creeping nationalisation' öa trend encouraged by the unionsöministers have vehemently denied that they intend to take the industry back into public ownership. First, OPRAF was replaced by a Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) capable of providing a focus for the strategic planning of the passenger and freight railway. The SRA has itself now been abolished as the Department for Transport has sought to regain control over escalating industry costs.(2) Second, in 2001 the government withdrew support for Railtrack, which faced huge financial difficulties due to rising costs in the aftermath of the Hatfield crash in October 2000, replacing it with Network Rail, a company `limited by guarantee' and nationalised in all but name (Wolmar, 2005). Employment in the rail industry has been in decline for most of the postwar period, with the total number employed falling from 255 902 in 1974 to 121 052 in 1994 (Gourvish, 2004). There are no reliable figures for overall employment under privatisation. In part, this reflects differences in definitions and coverage between different data sources, but it is also associated with the very significant casualisation of labour in the track-maintenance and track-renewals sectors from the mid-to-late 1990s.(3) Employment in the TOC sectoröfor which there are accurate dataöfell from 48 919 in 1994 to 39 338 in 2000 /01 before rising to 42 120 in 2001 /02 and 44 942 in 2002 /03 (Gourvish, 2004; Rail Industry Monitor various dates). Employment reductions after 1994 resulted from the new operators' efforts to make early efficiency gains, offering voluntary redundancy and severance packages to long-standing employees (EIRO, 2000). A similar process of rationalisation and employment reduction occurred in other privatised industries, such as water and electricity (Tickell, 1998), reflecting a belief that nationalisation was associated with inefficiency and overstaffing. The rise in employment since 2001 reflects a recognition by TOCs, in the face of rising passenger numbers and revenues, that the rationalisation drive had gone too far and had resulted in major skills and labour shortages. Rail is the sector of the UK economy with the highest union density ö 75%, compared with the all-industry average of 31% in the late 1990s ö making organised labour an important force within the industry (Haubrich, 2001). There are four main rail unions. The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) represents train drivers, drivers in training, and some former drivers now in supervisory grades. ASLEF reported a total of 17 472 members in 2003, and union (2) In

a related development, the ORR has been replaced by an Office for Rail Regulation, with slightly different functions. (3) Network Rail assumed direct control of track maintenanceöalthough not renewalsöfrom private contractors in 2004, and there is increasing stability in this section of the labour market as a result.


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density is extremely high at around 98% (authors' interviews). ASLEF's membership has risen since privatisation owing largely to recruitment initiatives by train operators to address rising patronage and reductions in working hours. The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) had an overall membership of 67 467 in 2003, of which approximately 80% are employed in the rail industry as guards, station staff, and maintenance workers. It has a lower density than ASLEF, and membership levels in the rail sector declined in the early years following privatisation ö partly reflecting the increased use of casual and contract labour. Since 2001, however, the RMT's overall membership has risen by 16%. The Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA), which represents `white collar' clerical and management staff in the industry, had 32 246 members in 2004. The TSSA's membership fell after privatisation before slowly increasing as new recognition agreements were struck. Amicus is active primarily on the engineering side of the railway, but is less significant than its three counterparts in terms of overall rail industry membership. The recent increases in rail union membership confound not only the general trend in the UK ö where overall density fell to 29% in 2004 (DTI, 2005) ö but also the assumption of the Conservatives and others that rail privatisation would undermine organised labour (Haubrich, 2001). Indeed, by generating a new climate of revenue generation and profit maximisation, compared with the emphasis on cost reduction under nationalisation, privatisation created opportunities for unions to secure improved pay and conditions for their members (Arrowsmith, 2003). At the same time, however, the privatisation process brought considerable threats in terms of employment cuts and the requirement for workers to adjust to the reorganised industry and new forms of working (Strangleman, 2004). 4 The rescaling of employment relations in the privatised rail industry The rescaling of the privatised rail industry involved the creation of geographically defined franchises. In the mid-1980s, prior to privatisation, BR was reorganised into business sectors which replaced the old regions created in 1948. The sectors were comprised of subsectors of geographically defined groups of lines, which formed the basis for the twenty-five train operating units (TOUs) created on 1 April 1994 (Charlton, 2000, page 37). These TOUs defined the areas for which contracts were ultimately awarded to TOCs, after a complex and protracted process of franchising (table 1). In this way, rescaling emerged out of the process of reform, based on competition for franchises between private operators. The network nature of the rail industry means that the franchises were awarded on the basis of groups of routes, rather than spatial units per se, although in most cases these routes are contained within a particular region or locality. Whilst the postprivatisation scales of operation had some prior existence within BR, they were vested with a new strategic and ideological significance by the government and private operators. Indeed, the new spatial structure of the industry directly invoked the prenationalised railways, with geographically resonant names such as Great North Eastern and Greater Western symbolising the reemergent spirit and values of private enterprise. It is important to stress that the rescaling associated with rail privatisation also created new relations and connections between scales through the organisational structures and strategies of the different actors involved, rather than merely privileging the local or regional scales. As a result, employment relations have been shaped by different sets of actors operating across different spatial scales. Although they operate along and within defined subnational units, TOCs are owned by larger corporations, often multinational transport companies such as First, Stagecoach, and Virgin (table 1).

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Table 1. The process of industry rescaling: from business sectors to train operating companies (TOCs) (source: Charlton, 2000). BR business sector InterCity Anglia and Gatwick East Coast

BR train operating unit

Privatised TOC

Initial owner

Anglia Gatwick Express

Anglia Gatwick Express

GB Rail National Express Group

InterCity East Coast Great North Eastern Railway

Sea Containers

Great Western

Great Western

First Great Western

Great Western Holdings

Midland and Cross Country

Midland Main Line Cross Country

Midland Mainline Virgin Cross Country

National Express Group Virgin Rail Group

West Coast

Inter City West Coast

Virgin West Coast

Virgin Rail Group

Network SouthEast Great Eastern

Great Eastern

First Great Eastern

First Group

London Tilbury & Southend

London Tilbury & Southend Rail

C2c

National Express Group

North

North London Railways

Silverlink Train Services


South Central

Network South Central

Connex South Central

CGEA

South East

South Eastern

Connex South Eastern

CGEA

South West

South West Trains Isle of Weight

South West Trains Island Line

Stagecoach Holdings Stagecoach Holdings

Thames and Chiltern

Chiltern Lines Thames Trains

Chiltern Railways Thames Trains

M40 Trains Victory Railways

Thameslink

Thameslink

Thameslink

Go Ahead/VIA

West Anglia and Great Northern


West Anglia and Great Northern (WAGN Railways)

Prism Rail

Regional Railways BR Central

Central

Central Trains


BR North East

North East

Northern Spirit

MTL Trust Holdings

BR North West

North West Merseyrail Electrics

First North Western Merseyrail Electrics

First Group MTL Trust Holdings

BR South Wales and West

South Wales and Wales and West Cardiff Prism Rail West Cardiff Valleys Railway Company

ScotRail

ScotRail

ScotRail


At the same time, the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) provides a forum for the discussion of industrial relations strategies. The main rail unions are organised primarily at the national level, although they have an established branch structure at the local and regional levels. In common with other privatised industries, one of the main consequences of BR's demise has been the decentralisation of collective-bargaining arrangements and the rescaling of employment relations. As a result, a single set of spatially uniform national bargaining arrangements and employment conditions has given way to a host of


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spatially differentiated terms and conditions. Under BR, the 1956 Memorandum of Agreement (the `big book') between the British Transport Commission and the three rail unionsöwhich actually codified procedures which had been in operation since 1935öprovided for collective bargaining over pay and conditions at the national level through the Railway Staff National Council (Ewing, 2003). Below the national scale, Sectional Councils were also established for each of the BR regions to deal with local issues concerning the application of national agreements, promotion and redundancy procedures, and the regrading and reclassification of posts. After privatisation, the established national framework was rapidly dismantled in favour of company-level bargaining as the TOCs established new structures for conducting industrial relationsöusually involving three distinct levels. The highest of these levels is a joint negotiating committee, or pay-review body, in which representatives of management and labour negotiate general pay awards and terms and conditions of employment. These are complemented by company councils which generally deal with the implementation of general agreements on pay and conditions, and which cover more specific issues such as grading structures, promotions, and redundancies, as well as providing a forum for the discussion of strategic issues concerning company performance and operations. In a small number of cases, pay and conditions are negotiated through the company council. Finally, detailed working arrangements and practices are discussed between local workforce representatives and local managers. A key effect of the decentralisation of collective bargaining is that the unions are required to deal with a large number of companies. Now the RMT engages with twenty-five TOCs (see table 1), six freight operators, three rolling stock companies, three infrastructure companies, and seven major infrastructure maintenance and renewal companies (RMT, 2003), and ASLEF has bargaining arrangements with thirty-six companies. The spatial implications for unions are mixed. On the one hand, considerable extra resources and some geographical restructuring of union operations are required to deal with the shift from national and regional scales to company-centric modes of operation (authors' interviews). At the same time, national organisational structures and resources have been deployed to support local bargaining, highlighting the connections between overlapping scales of action (Rutherford and Gertler, 2002; Sadler, 2000). Additionally, the union response is likely to vary spatially, contingent upon the strength of local and regional union organisation (Martin et al, 1994; Wills, 1996). On the other hand, there are opportunities for unions to take advantage of local pattern bargaining, in theory at least, by coordinating action across space and playing different companies off against one another in order to improve pay and conditions in relatively tight labour-market circumstances. Significantly, though, recent campaigns have seen the unions strategically prioritise a particular scale in arguing for a return to national bargaining, emphasising the divisive consequences of decentralised bargaining in terms of creating greater divergence in pay and conditions across the industry (Ewing, 2003; RMT, 2003). The train operators, by contrast, value the local scale, viewing company-level bargaining as an essential mechanism which enables them to manage their businesses in a commercial fashion (authors' interviews). The TOCs inherited a complex set of pay arrangements from BR, based on `à low basic rate supplemented by a plethora of allowances and bonuses which inhibited labour flexibility and recruitment'' (Arrowsmith, 2003, page 157). The strategy followed by many TOCs has been to consolidate these allowances and bonuses into a single higher salary in return for more flexible working. At the same time, TOCs are often highly vulnerable to the effects of any industrial action since they can incur financial penalties for failing to meet their service obligations under the terms of their franchises, in addition to the direct revenue lost.

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5 Uneven outcomes of privatisation and rescaling 1: pay and conditions Privatisation and associated processes of restructuring have impacted markedly upon pay and conditions across the rail industry. The rail unions state that the organisational fragmentation of the industry has led to significant differences with, for instance, twenty-eight different rates existing for drivers in the thirty-six different companies that ASLEF deals with (Ewing, 2003, page 15). In the engineering sector, Network Rail is seeking to standardise a plethora of working arrangements among staff which they inherited when track maintenance was brought back ìn house'. Examples of actual disparities in pay and conditions have been presented by the unions as part of a campaign for the reintroduction of collective bargaining at the national level. Whilst this has highlighted some of the more glaring examples of pay differentials within the industry, there is a need for more systematic analysis to assess how widespread such disparities actually are. Access to the RMT pay and conditions database has enabled us to paint a fairly detailed picture of pay and conditions within certain sectors of the industry, including pay rates, pay awards, and associated conditions for the majority of the thirty-one companies listed. Our focus here is on jobs associated with train operations, particularly drivers and guards; data relating to the reorganisation of Network Rail's activities will be presented elsewhere.(4) It seems reasonable to expect the decentralisation of bargaining arrangements to have led to substantial disparities in pay and conditions between companies, given variations in company strategies and profitability as well as differences between local and regional labour markets. On the other hand, the existence of strong industry norms, including the notion of a common `going rate' for particular jobs, together with the highly unionised nature of the rail industry, may have limited the scope for differentials to emerge. Table 2 provides some basic historical background, presenting 1974 ^ 2004 pay rates for drivers and guards. This shows a continuing differential between the two groups, with guards' pay remaining at around 77 ^ 78% that of drivers' between 1974 and 1994. Whilst both groups' pay rates have risen markedly since privatisation, the position of guards/conductors has deteriorated sharply relative to drivers. Following the rationalisation drives undertaken by the privatised rail companies in the mid-to-late 1990s, labour shortages placed drivers in a particularly strong market position, with ASLEF able to secure large pay rises of up to 30% for its members against a backdrop of increasing rail patronage and revenues (SRA, 2005; authors' interviews). In some cases, drivers now receive a consolidated salary which is more than three times the base rate of »11 226 in 1994 (table 2, table 3). By contrast, the market position of other grades, such as guards/conductors, is weaker, meaning that the earnings gap has widened considerably (RMT, 2003). According to the RMT (2003), this growing differential has created serious tensions within the industry, which underpin some of the industrial disputes that have broken out since 2002. Table 2. Wages rates (») for drivers and guards/conductors, 1974 ^ 2004 (source: calculated from Gourvish, 2004, page 491; RMT Pay and Conditions Database).

1974 1984 1994 2004

Drivers

Guards/conductors

Guards/conductors as percentage of drivers

1 846 6 292 11 226 30 646

1 419 4 921 8 608 20 074

76.7 78.2 76.7 65.5

(4) We refer to the traditional role of `guards', rather than the job title, as this has changed in a number of franchises ö examples of revised job titles are `train manager' and `senior conductor'.


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Table 3 shows how basic wage rates for drivers and guards/conductors, including regional allowances where offered, vary between individual companies. Some variation around the mean rates certainly exists both for drivers and for conductors, but in general terms dispersion is relatively limited for drivers, with a standard deviation of »2888, and proportionately higher (although still not vast) for guards, with a standard deviation of »2282. The largest pay differentials for drivers is »11741 (31%) between GNER and c2c Rail, and »11 062 for conductors (41%) between Virgin West Coast and Northern Rail (ex Arriva Trains Northern), but these are exceptional (RMT, 2003).(5) The relationship between driver and conductor pay rates by individual company was examined, with a correlation coefficient of 0.36 revealing a weak positive association. The largest differential in terms of regional allowances (London weighting) is »1455 (69%) between the freight company EWS Railways and òne' Railway (ex First Great Eastern) for the ìnner London' category, but again the rate offered by the latter is exceptionally low. A breakdown by ownership showed some limited differences, with only Virgin appearing to differ significantly from industry averages at 15.45% and 18.61% above average for drivers and guards, respectively, although this perhaps reflects the prestigious ìntercity' nature of their West Coast and Cross Country franchises rather than any effects of ownership per se. We sought to examine pay rates by a set of basic geographical categories, covering both the spatial scales at which companies operate and the networks that link different places along routes. Our categories reflect the nature of the railway operations in terms of movement across space: `national' companies are those that operate across Great Britain (for example, EWS Railways); `corridors' are defined as routes that link different NUTS Level 1 `standard' regions (for example, GNER, operating along the East Coast Mainline); regional operators are those whose activities are focused within particular regions (for example, ScotRail); and local companies are active in particular areas within these regions (for example, South Eastern Trains). The Intercity companies operating along `corridors' offer the highest rates, on average, both for drivers and for conductors (table 3), and this grouping is followed by the local and regional operators. The `national' group of companies is limited mainly to a small number of freight operators, with wage rates generally below the industry average. It is important to consider this general pattern from a labour-market perspective (Castree et al, 2004; Peck and Haughton, 1996).(6) The historical trend for Intercity drivers to be paid a premium by BRöthey were generally the most experienced and highly promoted, crewing the passenger rail industry's `flagship' services öappears to have continued. Yet the apparent absence of a discernable gap between the drivers of `local' and `regional' companies is perhaps surprising, since `local' TOCs operate almost exclusively within the buoyant labour market of the southeast of England whereas the `regional' group run trains mainly within the less prosperous areas of Scotland, Wales, and the midlands and north of England. This is most likely explained by the general shortage of driversöwho take around a year to trainöacross the industry, which followed rationalisation programmes. Guards' pay is more in line with expectations, as wages paid by the `local' companies in the southeast of England are generally higher than those offered by their regional counterparts. (5) Although the RMT document states that the difference between the highest paid and lowest paid guards, employed by Virgin and c2c respectively, is »15 226 (59%), unfortunately, we do not have reliable data on guards' pay for c2c. (6) There is some inconsistency between the NUTS regions and the operating territories of some `regional' train operatorsöfor example, Northern Rail operates both across the North East and across the North West, and òne' runs trains both in the South East and in East Angliaöbut this is not generally significant in relation to this analysis.

Company

Drivers rates (£)

Description

Conductors rates (£)

Description

Regional allowances

2097 inner London 1258 outer London 898 other South East 1768 inner London 789 outer London 382 other South East

28 890

19 106

guard/senior train host a

Freightliner

28 500

20 166

senior conductor

Freightliner Heavy Haul Virgin Cross Country

no data no data

no data 20 855

train manager

Mean

28 695

20 042

Corridor First Great Western

32 000

Great North Eastern Railway

37 460

Hull Trains Midland Mainline

30 000

Thameslink

33 280

Virgin West Coast

32 856 35 924 37 367

Mean

34 127

mainline

22 785

train manager senior conductor

mainline

local drivera core routea London 1 year core route

17 261 22 211

train manager train managera

26 764

train manager

22 255

1859 inner London 836 outer London 399 other South East 1913 inner London 857 outer London 1500 inner Londonb 1895 inner Londonc 1832 inner London 813 outer London 386 other South East 1700 inner London


National EWS

1358

Table 3. Pay rates for drivers and conductors (source: RMT Pay and Conditions Database, accessed 17 August 2005).

N:/psfiles/epa4006w/

Company

Drivers rates (£)

Description

Conductors rates (£)

Description

19 096 19 396 19 535 19 351

conductor senior conductor (ex Central) guard senior conductor

19 823 18 539 18 033

Regional Arriva Trains Wales

30 581

Central Trains

31 110

First ScotRail First Transpennine

29 120 28 000 29 355

Northern Rail ex Arriva Trains Northern Northern Rail ex First North Western One ex Anglia One ex First Great Eastern One ex West Anglia and Great Northern

30 417

15 702

conductor conductor ex First North Western conductor ex Arriva Trains Northern conductora

29 092

18 539

conductor

29 498 31 074 29 901

no data 19 422 20 166

368 other South East Wessex Trains

28 840

19 831

Mean

29 726

18 953

c2c Rail Chiltern

25 719 29 179

First Great Western Link

no data

ex First North Western ex Arriva Trains Northerna

20 796 22 702 18 943 20 166

conductor railway retail supervisor

Regional allowances

1833 inner London c

642 inner London 1728 inner London 774 outer London


Table 3 (continued).

conductor

train host senior train host conductor senior conductor

1771 inner London 777 outer London 1730 inner London 774 outer London 369 other South East 1359

1360

Table 3 (continued). Company

Drivers

Gatwick Express

30 223

Island Line Merseyrail Silverlink

27 852 28 000 29 000

Description rates (£)

South Eastern Trains

Conductors

Description rates (£)

25 442 20 453 20 095 18 158 19 048 18 567 17 362

train manager senior conductor conductor guard leading conductor conductor/guard

20 198

conductor/guard

34 871

25 038 20 657

guard guard

Southern

no data

20 097

conductor


28 890

18 303

railway retail supervisora

Mean

29 217

20 377

Overall mean

30 646

20 074

a Midpoint

between minimum and maximum points on pay scale. allowances specific to drivers. c Regional allowances specific to conductors. b Regional

1198 inner London 358 outer Londonb 348 outer London 362 outer London (wider)c 1638 inner London 733 outer London 348 other South East 1471 inner London 659 outer London 313 other South East 1670 inner London 748 outer London 356 other South East


South West Trains

Regional allowances


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The RMT database indicated that some fifty-three pay agreements had been reached between the union and the thirty-one rail-operating and freight companies that it deals with. The number of agreements is considerably higher than the number of companiesöseveral companies have reached different agreements for different categories of staff. This suggests that the consolidation of pay and conditions ösomething which many of the TOCs have been trying to undertakeöstill has some way to go, particularly for companies which have taken over different franchises and/or inherited staff on different terms and conditions. For example, Arriva Trains Wales, which took over the new regionally integrated franchise for Wales (formerly Wales and Borders), has five separate agreements with the RMT, covering five different categories of staff, reflecting how the franchise was created from parts of what were five separate businesses held by different companies. Companies holding other recently integrated franchises, such as Northern Rail and òne' Railway also still have separate agreements for staff inherited from different companies which previously held parts of the new franchise. A number of established franchise holders, on the other hand, such as c2c Rail, Chiltern, First Great Western, GNER, South West Trains, Southern, Thameslink, Virgin Cross Country, and Virgin West Coast, have single agreements with the RMT. Analysis of the most recent agreements (2004/ 05 or 2005 /06) listed between the RMT and the thirty-one rail operating and freight companies showed that the mean pay award was 3.7%. The overwhelming majority of awards were between 3% and 4.2%, with the highest being the 6% agreed with Arriva Trains Wales for drivers, and the lowest the 2.5% agreed with c2c Railöcovering all categories of staff. These rises are generally modest, in line with the economy more broadly; the era of large pay rises for drivers seems to be over and there is no evidence of significant differentials in awards between them and other categories of staff. Whilst this means that the increased pay gap between drivers and other staff should not widen further, there is little prospect of it narrowing. Some 51% of agreements represent one stage of wider multistage agreements, most of which are two-stage, two-year deals, with two companies agreeing three-stage, three-year deals (Southern and South West Trains), another two reaching four-year deals (Island Line and Wessex for drivers) and one running a five-year deal (Arriva Trains Wales for drivers). The clear majority of the remaining single-stage agreements were for one year. In general terms, this points to considerable complexity in the agreements reached between RMT and rail-operating and freight companies, with many favouring complex multistage deals which are often linked to productivity and adjustments in associated conditions of employment (authors' interviews). Tables 4 and 5 show variations in employment conditions in relation to two key criteria: hours worked per week and annual leave entitlement. A strong degree of convergence around the new industry standard of 35 hours a week is evident, contained in 52% of agreements and found at nineteen of the thirty-one companies listed (61%). Significant numbers of staff are still working longer than this, however, with several companies retaining a 37-hour week (RMT, 2003). Revenue-protection staff at Southern Trains and train managers on Virgin West Coast have the longest working weeks at 41 hours. The modal class for annual leave entitlement is 32 days per year (31.7%) with 18 (44%) agreements offering more days and 10 (4.4%) fewer. The gap between the highest and lowest entitlements is 15 daysöVirgin West Coast and at-seat catering staff on Arriva Trains Wales, respectively, although these are outliers. In general, therefore, there is more variation in terms of annual leave entitlement than in terms of hours.

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Table 4. Hours worked per week (source: RMT Pay and Conditions Database). Hours

Number of agreements

35 36 37 37.5 38 39 41 36.11

28 2 11 1 1 3 2 mean

Table 5. Annual holiday entitlement. Holidays

Number of agreements

20 22 28 29 30 32 33 34 35 31.6

1 1 2 1 5 13 8 9 1 mean

6 Uneven outcomes of privatisation and rescaling 2: industrial action In this subsection we widen the scope of the analysis to include all categories of staff within the industry, including track maintenance and renewals, station staff, and administrative workers, alongside drivers and guards. The criterion for inclusion in our database of industrial action is that of official action undertaken by a union after a ballot of members. The chain of events associated with this can be conceptualised as follows (figure 1). The first stage is that of an issue arising in a particular company or group of companies, often as a result of management policies or initiatives. In some cases, if the issue cannot be resolved through negotiation within the collective-bargaining machinery, it may develop into a dispute. This can occur either through official channels if the union leadership and local activists agree to pursue the issue, or unofficial action if workers decide simply to walk out or take other action without the backing of the union. The official route leads to a ballot, with the union recommending a particular outcome. A vote in favour of action will result in a strike, or action short of strike, depending on the particular tactics adopted, whereas a vote against obviously results in no action being taken. Action will normally lead to some kind of resolution of the issue, or a decision to abandon the action by the union and workforce. Our database is concerned with the bottom part of figure 1, that is, approved official action involving either strikes or other acts.(7) A smaller `strike' database, containing forty-five strikes out of seventy-five approved actions (7) Approved

actions which are subsequently cancelled or suspended are more difficult to capture than actual strike action. Whilst our database of approved actions may therefore exclude some approved actions which were later called off, we are confident that the smaller strikes database has captured virtually all strike action since 1997.


1363

3

Issue

Dispute

3

3

Ballot

3

3

Unofficial action

No action

3

3

Official action

Other acts

3 3

Strike

Resolutions

Figure 1. Industrial action in the privatised rail industry.

between 1997 and 2004, was extracted for more detailed analysis.(8) The focus on official action rather than disputes means that ongoing disputes may be recorded several times, according to the number of ballots and actions that were held. Thus, for example, the ongoing dispute between the RMT and Arriva Trains Northern in 2002/03 is recorded five times. It is important to have some appreciation of industrial relations in the railways prior to privatisation in order to comprehend fully the pattern that has emerged since 1997. The official history of British Rail 1974 ^ 1997 (Gourvish, 2004) documents eleven cases of industrial action between 1979 and 1996, eight of which were actual strikes with three consisting of action short of a strike.(9) Nine of these actions were national in scale, reflecting the integrated national structure of the railways under BR, and two were locally focused. Changes to working arrangements and pay were the main issues triggering action, with the former being uppermost in the early 1980s and the latter in the early 1990s. Interestingly, BR's proposal to decentralise collective-bargaining processes triggered a series of six-day strikes by the NUR and a ban on working on rest days and overtime by ASLEF in the summer of 1989. Strikes over pay were held by the (8) The remaining thirty actions were either àction short of a strike' or, more commonly, the issue was resolved before actual strike action was taken. (9) Although we acknowledge that this may not include all cases of industrial action, as the source is not specifically focused on industrial relations.

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RMT in 1993 and 1994 and ASLEF in 1994, in a climate of uncertainty stemming from the government's proposals to privatise the railways. Overall, the level of industrial action in the period before privatisation was not particularly high, and action tended to take the form of set piece national strikes. Turning to the period after privatisation, of the seventy-five official industrial actions, strike action was actually taken in forty-five of these cases (60%); in the majority of the remainder, strike action was called off after talks between the union and the employer. Of the balloted actions, 79% involved TOCs, with the remainder divided between FOCs, maintenance/infrastructure contractors and Network Rail/ Railtrack. The RMT was involved in 62.7% of these balloted actions, with ASLEF accounting for 30.7% and the TSSA 6.7%. As this suggests, the white-collar union is traditionally far less militant than the other two, to the extent that the strike action it took against Arriva Trains Northern in February 2002 to demand improved pay and conditions for station, retail, and administrative staff represented its first strike for thirty years (authors' interviews). In general, it is apparent that the number of balloted actions since 1997 greatly exceeds that in the 1979 ^ 96 period, reflecting the fragmentation of the industry in terms of the transfer of operations to an array of private owners and the decentralisation of collective-bargaining procedures to the individual company level. A key trend that emerges from the database concerns the temporal pattern of action, with a very limited number of actions occurring in the first four years of the privatised railways before a real upsurge took place in 2002 and 2003 particularly (table 6). These two years account for 54.7% and 57.7% of ballot actions and strikes, respectively. This seems to reflect an increasingly proactive stance by the unions, with both the RMT and ASLEF under radical left-wing leaderships and determined to take action against what they viewed as growing differentials in pay and conditions and in support of a return to national bargaining processes (see Charlwood, 2004). Table 6. Breakdown of the 45 approved industrial actions and strikes in the rail industry by year, 1997 ^ 2004. Year

Approved actions

Strikes

no

no

%

3 4 2 2 5 11 15 3

6.7 8.8 4.4 4.4 11.1 24.4 33.3 6.7

45

100

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

5 5 2 4 8 20 21 10

Total

75

% 6.7 6.7 2.7 5.3 10.7 26.7 28.0 13.3 100

The geographical pattern of action, focusing on actual strikes, shows that a large majority (73.3%) of actions were conducted at the local and regional scale (table 7). These local and regional actions have generally been taken by the RMT and ASLEF against some of the main TOCs, including ScotRail, Arriva Trains Northern, and First North Western. Only 18% of strikes since January 1997 were organised on a national basis, with action being taken either against a particular freight company that operates nationally, the majority of TOCs over the role of guards, Railtrack/Network Rail, or the main maintenance and infrastructure contractors. Not only were more strikes occurring under


1365

Table 7. Breakdown of the 45 strike actions in the rail industry 1997 ^ 2004 by geographical category. Geographical category

Number

Percentage of strike action

National Corridor Regional Local Unclassified

9 3 14 19 1

17.8 6.7 31.1 42.2 2.2

privatisation than before, they were also different in natureöbeing conducted at the local and regional scale rather than across sections of the industry as a whole, reflecting the fragmentation of the railways and the logic of localised pay bargaining. Yet, as we have said, whilst companies hold franchises on a geographical basis, operating local, regional, corridor, or national services, the unions remain national organisations. The companies stress the value of company-level bargaining in enabling them to run their business commercially, whereas the unions hanker for the reintroduction of national bargaining. Arguably, however, the unions' national organisation can provide them with advantages in coordinating actions that have been taken against several different TOCs simultaneously, representing one way in which they can ùpscale' their activities and use the spatially uneven landscape of industrial relations to their advantage (Herod et al, 2003). One example of such simultaneous action occurred in April 2003, when the RMT conducted strikes against eleven TOCs on the same five days in relation to an ongoing dispute about the role of guards. The companies alleged that this action was `political', and that the union was acting simultaneously as part of a campaign for a return to national bargaining (authors' interviews). Table 8 demonstrates that by far the most important reason behind balloted action was, as might be expected, dissatisfaction with pay and conditions. Examples include RMT and ASLEF strikes against Merseyrail in 1997 and 1998, ASLEF action against the freight operator EWS Railway in 2001 and 2003, and ASLEF action against ScotRail in March 2002. Deals were eventually agreed to resolve these disputes, in some cases with the assistance of the Advisory and Conciliation Service. Changes to roles and responsibilities was the next most important subject of disputes, with most such action focused upon proposed changes to the role of guardsöthe unions claiming that these changes involved deskilling and had implications for safety, which was conventionally part of guards' responsibilities. As indicated above, this was the subject of the simultaneous actions against eleven TOCs in April 2003. Anger at pay differentials between drivers and other groups of staff was behind 21.3% of balloted actions, most of which were Table 8. Breakdown of the 75 approved industrial actions in the rail industry 1997 ^ 2004, by causal issues. Issue

Number

Pay and conditions Pay differentials Changes to roles and responsibilities Hours/time off Disciplinary issues Union recognition/representation Other

37 16 18 8 3 2 8

Total

92

Percentage of disputes 49.3 21.3 24.0 10.7 4.0 2.7 10.7

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conducted by the RMT and took place in 2002 and 2003 after drivers were awarded large pay increases. The most notable example is the aforementioned dispute between the RMT and Arriva Trains Northern, with the TSSA also taking action against this company for the same reason. These RMT actions stretched over a year, with the union demanding a similar 17.5% pay rise for guards, until it eventually accepted a 4% offer plus a »250 lump sumösomething that was widely regarded as a U-turn. Whilst strikes are triggered and conducted at the local and regional scales (Rutherford and Gertler, 2002, page 202), in most cases they are underpinned by industry-wide issues such as pay and conditions, pay differentials, or proposed changes to guards' roles and responsibilities. In this sense, different geographical scales and corridors are entangled, highlighting the relational importance of scale in terms of the overlap and interaction of the subnational and national levels (Sadler, 2000, page 148). 7 Conclusions Our aim in this paper has been to contribute to a growing body of research on the changing geography of labour and employment relations (Herod, 2001; Holmes, 2004; Wills, 1998). As we have shown, rail privatisation in Britain has resulted in the decentralisation of collective bargaining with industry-wide arrangements giving way to a fragmented system of localised company-specific bargaining (EIRO, 2000; Ewing, 2003). This process of rescaling can be seen as the product of the interaction between privatisation as a national state policy and preexisting industry structures. As a result, subnational units were vested with a new strategic and ideological significance as spaces of enterprise and innovation. Different interests have subsequently tended to prioritise different scales, with the operating companies stressing the benefits of company-level bargaining and the unions arguing for a return to national bargaining. At the same time, the links between different scales are crucial, particularly on the union side where national structures and resources are utilised to support local bargaining and where ostensibly local disputes are often underpinned by industrywide issues. On the company side, too, TOCs owned by the same parent group can share resources and approaches, and ATOC provides a vehicle for the broader coordination of activities and tactics. In this sense, different scales overlap and intersect through the strategies employed both by capital and by labour, reinforcing the point that local collective bargaining is still `àlso about connective bargaining'' (Sadler, 2000, page 142). In the main empirical sections we have mapped the outcomes of privatisation and rescaling in terms of pay and conditions and industrial action. Instead of simply benefiting employers at the expense of unions and workers, what has emerged is a highly uneven geography in which outcomes have varied widely between different companies and different groups of workers. Drivers in particular have been able to exploit tightening labour-market conditions and skill shortages, gaining large pay increases. In general, the gains that have been made arise largely from the unintended consequences of labour-market conditions across the industry, shaped by a rising demand for drivers (reflecting rising passenger numbers) and a reduced supply stemming from the newly privatised companies' strategy of employment cuts. Local and regional labour market contexts (Peck and Haughton, 1996) have had some influence, with wage rates remaining lower, particularly among nondriving staff, in more disadvantaged regions such as Wales, Scotland, and the north of England than in the more prosperous regions of London and the southeast of England. By contrast, spatial differences in union organisation and culture have had little direct impact on sectoral and spatial disparities in pay and conditions in the industry. Partly as result of the pay differentials that have emerged under privatisation, the number of industrial disputes


1367

has escalated in recent years. Instead of the set piece national strikes that took place in the nationalised industry, the majority of strike action has been conducted against particular operators at the local and regional scales, reflecting the logic of companylevel bargaining (Rutherford and Gertler, 2002, page 202). At the same time, the membership of the three main unions has actually increased in recent years, against a backdrop of long-term decline, suggesting that, whilst the fragmentation of collective bargaining has been a challenge to the unions, it has also provided opportunities. Reflecting on the broader spatial implications of fragmentation for unions, it would appear that, rather than weakening their position within the industry, restructuring has been a spur to processes of union regeneration. Although we acknowledge that we have not explicitly examined unions' strategies in this paper, three themes emerge which inform debates about union renewal (Charlwood, 2004; Cumbers, 2005; Wills, 2005). First, company-level bargaining has provided the stimulus to reenergise local union organisation, with strike activity an important means of mobilising grassroots membership (Wills, 2005). Second, the increasing geographical variation in conditions between workers doing the same job provides unions with a cause around which they can unify their membership on the basis of a sense of natural justice: `the same pay rate for the same job'. Third, there appears to be evidence that, in certain situations, fragmentation provides nationally organised unions with important strategic and discursive advantages over train operators who are more spatially restricted in their operations. The strength of the preexisting union culture within a heavily unionised industry seems to have been crucial in helping the rail unions to respond to the challenge of a changing environment, in contrast to the situation in other sectors where processes of restructuring have undermined union strength (see Martin et al, 1994; Wills, 1996). More negatively, though, questions arise for the longer term concerning the organisational and spatial integrity of unions as the conditions facing employees in different regions and sections of the industry become even more differentiated. In this sense, the prospect of a return to national collective bargaining may be seen as a threat by certain groups of workers (for example, train drivers on key corridor routes) who have done well out of privatisation. In broader terms, the upscaling of bargaining processes in order to address spatial disparities and tensions between different groups of workers is likely to remain a central goal of union strategies. Acknowledgements. We acknowledge the financial support of the ESRC for the project upon which this paper is based, ``Changing employment relations in privatised industries: the case of rail'', RES 000220691. We are grateful to Gillian Gallardo for her research assistance on the project, including the compilation of the industrial actions database. We would also like to thank Alistair Gittins and Bob Crow of the RMT for granting us access to their pay and conditions database, and representatives of the rail operating companies and trade unions for agreeing to be interviewed. References Amoore L, 2002 Globalization Contested: States, Firms and the Organization of Work (Manchester University Press, Manchester) Arrowsmith J, 2003,``Post-privatisation industrial relations in the UK rail and electricity industries'' Industrial Relations Journal 34 150 ^ 163 Castree N, 2000, ``Geographic scale and grassroots internationalism: the Liverpool dock dispute, 1995 ^ 8'' Economic Geography 76 272 ^ 292 Castree N, Coe N, Ward K, Samers M, 2004 Spaces of Work: Global Capitalism and Geographies of Labour (Sage, London) Charlton C, 2000, ``The structure of the new railway'', in All Change: British Railway Privatisation Eds R Freeman, J Shaw (McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead, Berks) pp 31 ^ 56 Charlton C, Gibb R, Shaw J, 1997, ``Regulation and continuing monopoly on Britain's railways'' Journal of Transport Geography 5 147 ^ 154 Charlwood A, 2004, ``The new generation of trade union leaders and prospects for union revitalization'' British Journal of Industrial Relations 42 379 ^ 397

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