27th Mai 2020

 

Yesterday afternoon a meeting of the ALE Board of Directors took place in an extraordinary way, due to the COVID-19 crisis, and was held for the first time virtually.

The President of ALE, Juan Jesús García Fraile, made a brief presentation of the most worrying issues for us as a professional union of train drivers in Europe and the path we have taken, based on safety, training, professionalism and employment, to get out of this pothole all together, but emphasizing and focusing on social, labour and economic rights of railway workers and in particular of train drivers.

Each member shared its particular situation with the entire Board of Directors, finding more common ground: the willingness of all of us, both at local and general level, to work side by side with organisations and institutions in order to guarantee the return to a safe and progressive railway operation, within the framework of quality employment and with the intention of continuing to provide an essential service to citizens, a commitment that all train drivers throughout Europe have amply demonstrated by carrying out their activity in the most difficult times, thus allowing for continuity in development and the adoption of measures that allow society to maintain a level, sometimes minimal, of guarantees of mobility, supply of essential goods and sustainability.

Given that we are at a critical time for the European railways due to the transposition of the 4th Railway Package and the pandemic that has ravaged the world, we see the need to repeat these meetings with the main representatives of European train drivers frequently in order to be able to check that the return to normality is being measured in each of the Member States and that nobody is being left behind as a result of interested acts to the detriment of the conditions of all our colleagues.

We hope that the light at the end of the tunnel will be translated into a short-term future in which rail transport is finally promoted as the backbone of the territory and as a sustainable means of bringing both people and goods into their homes in a safe and clean manner.