THE "SEPLISATION" OF THE SEMAF (Spanish Railway Engine-Driver Trade Union)

Even though with a reasonable happy ending, the RENFE engine-driver strike has established a negative watershed in RENFE«s trade union history. Just over a month ago we published in STOL an opinion article about the worrying trade union situation amidst the railway company, but reality has surpassed the worst forecasts that we had predicted at that moment.

The engineer-driver strike of the SEMAF not only has increased a traditional mistake of the railway trade union (to organise strikes against travellers), but it has also given rise in the railway sector to the application of tactics that had belonged to the airline pilot trade union (SEPLA), unfortunately famous for all those who were not its members.

It is difficult to find in the history of the Spanish labour relationships an institution with less solidarity and with more negative attitude than the SEPLA, a trade union that has demonstrated through the years to public opinion how a privileged group with scandalous millionaire salaries can bring companies and Government to their knees using travellers as hostages.

The RENFE engine-drivers are far from having the salaries and the corporate attitude of the pilots nor has the SEMAF ever reached the level of insolidarity of its aeronautical equivalent. But this time it has gone beyond a lot of its limits and it is falling completely into a "Seplisation". The effects will not only reach RENFE but all the Spanish railway sector and set up a very dangerous precedent of a lack of solidarity and an abuse of a strong position on behalf of a minority group. Although it is easy to sympathise with many of the demands that the engineer-drivers put forward to RENFE it is almost impossible for some-one that is not an engineer-driver (or an airline pilot ) to affirm one«s support to the main demand that brought about the conflict: the demand of an agreement only for engine-drivers separate from all the other RENFE workers.

That demand made the movement unsupportive and paved the way towards the dangerous "Seplisation" transforming the strike not only into a standstill against the company and the travellers but also against all the other RENFE workers.

That is why there is room for happiness because the SEMAF has finally given up this demand and the RENFE Board of directors will appear unyielding before it. The aim to set up formally a privileged elite can spread like wildfire giving rise to a continuos race of absurd unsupportive actions that transform the trade union action into a war amongst minorities. Don«t go deceiving yourselves: If the RENFE engine-drivers can press, why not the rest of the railway companies or the managing personnel or the ones that control informatics or any reduced group (and there are many) that may have the power to paralyse the framework ...?

All the cadre trade union have an elitist origin and are based on the existence of the breaking-up of the interests of the entirety of the workers to benefit just a few chosen, almost always to the detriment of the rest. Many reasons (authentic) about the working specificity of certain groups may be brandished and thus, its need to have a separate representation, but reality shows that these types of trade union only yield a profit when they unite groups with a capacity to press and are willing to use it to benefit exclusively their group.

The problem is that the rest of the workers pay for the damage, those that cannot stop easily trains or plains. What is easier for the companies is to yield and defend the balance in the results redistributing the salary mass. Therefore, in the end separate agreements and working improvements of a few will end up being financed by the incomes of the rest of the personnel.

In the end, without minimising the serious damages caused, to RENFE as well as the public image of the engineer-drivers, the solving of the conflict has been reasonable. The workers obtain fair reinvindications and very sensible, like the step from helpers to engineer-drivers, an the idea of an sole working group is overcome, basic to maintain the social conquests economic and social framework not only Spanish but World, ever more unsupportive and aggressive for the interests of the workers.

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