2007 - The union group is born ! 

Intervention of the members of the union groups and of the president of EPSU at the 1st symposium of the group

Intervention of Christian GROLIER to the First European Trade Unions' Conference for Driving Licence and Road Safety. Dear comrades, dear colleagues, It is an honour for the SNICA-FO, Driving Examiners and Supervisors for Driving Licence and Road Safety to welcome in France the first European Trade Union's Symposium of Driving Licence and Road Safety. Firstly, I would like to present the apologies of our Dutch comrades who could not come and be with us for this event. Since 2004, the SNICA-FO and its European sister unions have shared experiences thanks to the strong support of our comrade and friend Anne-Marie Perret, President of EPSU. Of course, we should have preferred to have more participants with us today, but we feel already a great satisfaction with this first meeting For the SNICA-FO, it's time now to set up a specific European structure for unions to become the counterpart of the European instances and the CIECA (the international commission for driver testing authorities). It is now imperative to play a role of counterweight and to make proposals, particularly when negotiations take place on the issue of European directives for driving Licence. We should be able to reduce the negative effects of some directives or to improve them before they are published. We all know how it is complicated and difficult, when we have to fight the negative impacts of a directive transposed into our national law. Our united group will strengthen our national unions. Our affiliation to EPSU and the support which could be given will make us stronger. For this First Symposium, I think we should be organized and structured. This is the aim of the Charter we sent and which will be discussed now. We want to set up a Charter aiming to respecting everyone's values and guaranteeing everyone's freedom of expression for each Member State, in total independence. That's the reason why each country affiliated to the European Group will be given one voice/one vote, so that the equity can be assured. I am convinced that we will share views about the need for harmonizing Driving Test and its contents and the necessity for monitoring the Driving Schools, or for helping road safety to become an international convention of the ILO (International Labour Organization). Effectively, if we take the example of road accidents at the European level, I would stress that these are the first cause of death at work, on the way to our workplace or for professional travels. Therefore, we have to improve road safety, strengthening the role and the place of the Driving Test and developing the educational continuum from childhood to post-License as well. A lot of topics are on the table but our motivation is great because the struggle against road insecurity means protecting young people who are the main victims. On this peculiar point, an extract from a document of the European Commission for Transport in 2004 is meaningful : “Road safety affects directly the whole European Union and its inhabitants: within the 15 EU member States, there are 375 million road users, of which 200 million are driving licence holders. The grim reality is that, per annum, there are on average 1 300 000 accidents, causing 40 000 deaths and 1 700 0000 injuries on the roads. The direct and indirect cost of these tragedies has been estimated at 160 billion euros or 2% of  EU GNP (gross national product).” The European Union is aiming to halve the number of road deaths in the EU by 2010. The European Union urges to sign the European Road Safety Charter. If we validate together our operational charter and common motion at the end of our symposium, I will propose that the European Group signs the European Road Safety Charter. Some more words to end and to speak about the situation of the driving test in France. We are now in an very difficult situation. Driving examiners and Supervisors in France are State public servants. Because of a permanent understaffed situation, the candidates to the driving test have to wait several weeks and in some regions several months in case they failed. The administration takes this pretext to plan the privatisation of the driving tests and to transfer its mission of public service. We do reject this privatisation wich would lead to question the specific statute of  French Driving Examiners and Supervisors and therefore their guarantee of employment. Furthermore, privatisation would lead to prices' increases for users whereas the Driving Exam is free in France. In the same time, the French Government has withdrawn from the road maintenance which has been transferred to local authorities and as a matter of fact, it is no longer responsible for road safety. As you may note it, our new Government and new President are planning a “high speed” destruction of public service. This is done under the pretext of saving money and because of European rules imposing public deficits not to exceed 3 % of our GDP (Gross domestic product) These cuts in the budget are a real threat for the future of our Republic whose fundamental values are Freedom, Equality and Fraternity. Civil Service and Public Service are the pillars which guarantee equality of treatment for the citizens. Whatever they can be: rich, poor, diseased, in good shape, whatever their religion or race may be, they are all treated in an equal way by Public Service. If  Public Service is disappearing to be replaced by private companies with the single aim of making profit, only those who get enough money will be able to have access to health facilities, to education, and so on… This means the end of equality. If equality disappears, fraternity and freedom will disappear too. Then, our Republic would be in danger. For the SNICA-FO, this is not our vision of Public Service. As you can see, there are many difficult issues ahead. Our respective experiences will be of great help in this critical period. The SNICA-FO will do everything to keep French Driving Examiners and Supervisors as Public Servants, strengthening our missions of exam and controls. We are firmly optimistic and determined as there is no other alternative.  Now the floor is yours. First for Anne-Marie's speech, and then for you in order to give us your opinion on the setting up of this European Trade union Group and to know about the social situation in your own country. Thank you for your attention.

First conference of ETUG-DLRS, Speech of Steve GRIGOR, United kingdom, PCS  Today, we only have this english version. PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL SERVICES UNION VISION OF ROAD SAFETY IN EUROPE Save money or save lives? DSA present Driving Safety Forward as a coherent strategy to achieve real improvements in the grim toll of death & injury that occurs on our roads every year. However, it is  clearly more about saving money, as 3 Area Offices have already been closed. And structures have been put in place which seem to be designed to prepare driver testing operations for privatisation. The remainder of DSF proposals comprise of measures that are primarily aimed at not upsetting the electorate than seriously addressing road safety issues. Recent DSA history On 25 November 2005, I wrote to Our new Chief Executive, outlining our view of what direction the Agency should adopt to respond to the road safety agenda. Within that we raised the illogic of devoting massive resources to waiting times while ignoring issues that related directly to road safety. Issues like variances in pass rates within Driving Test centres, that we say are caused by lack of examiner training and lack of focus on the Senior Driving Examiner grade which we  say should be transformed into a proper line management role. Prior to our new chief Executive's appointment, we had secured agreement from her predecessor for an examiner role review to look at the time pressures examiners are under to get 7 55 minute tests conducted and what measures should be adopted to address that. The Agency seemed to accept the logic of basing management structures on the needs of front line staff.  However,we are still waiting for a response to the 25 November 2005 letter and PCS were not engaged in a dialogue about road safety. We remain dismayed that DSA sought not to involve front line examiners in their future road safety strategy. Instead, they have come up with an imposed "top down" approach (Driving Safety Forward) which they have presented to us as the only option for discussion. External Policy work Our response to DSA's failure to engage with us has been to take our messages about road safety outside the Agency in an attempt to influence DSA's policies. We have of course established links with SNICA-FO representatives with the help of Anne Marie Perret of EPSU. And our dialogue with European colleagues continues today. We are very much aware that employers are connected through CIECA and it is vital that we as Examiners meet, and exchange views with the aim of influencing European policy. Alongside this, we continue to work with the mass media to get our messages across to the public about the issues of importance to our members. Recently we have done much work on the problem of assaults on examiners and our contact with French Colleagues has been very instructive, leading to our demand for a change to the way we deliver test results to candidates. While we have not yet achieved issue of results by post, our publicity work has caused the Agency to take notice of the problem and we now have a joint working group looking at the problem of assaults. A major strand of our strategy to influence DSA has been through Parliamentary work. We have established links with the House of Commons Transport Select Committee and have drafted submissions to it this year on the subject of Novice Driver's. We hope to influence the committee's investigations into the work of the Department for Transport and DSA to keep road safety high in the public consciousness. Double Standards Agency Campaign has so far seen PCS campaign on                 Delegated Examiners - 12 to 1 check tests                 Dual Controls                 Illegal Number Plates                 A launch of the campaign included renaming ceremony - including the Chief Executive who tried to break up our demonstration single handed                 DSA's response was to threaten us with the High Court legal action for breach of their copyright via the Roads Minister writing to our General Secretary.                 We now have a meeting with the Minister on the 20th November to raise our concerns PCS vision for road safety                 We want a properly conducted Role Review to address examiner's problems with the current test schedule which is extremely tight. This conflicts with the introduction of IT systems in Test centres to facilitate employee self servicing regarding HR, Pay and Expenses functions which all takes more time. Currently, 5 Examiners have to share one PC!                 We believe candidates will only train to the level of the test. Therefore the test needs improving to encourage a better level of training.                 ADI's need to be professionalised via improved selection, training and ongoing development. We believe that they should also be salaried public servants rather than self employed.                 Extra time should be provided for Examiners, ADI's and their candidates to engage in a post test extended debrief. In the UK, this would cost one test per day and would potentially also reduce stress and sick absence among examiners                 Need to look at measures to improve services to poorer socio-economic groups who may not be attracted to DSA's voluntary schemes like pass-plus and  arrive alive modules. These voluntary measures have no proven statistically significant effect upon road casualties. PCS believes that this group is disproportionately involved in road accidents and are currently ignored by DSA.                 We do believe that international experience of Graduated Licensing provides compelling evidence that it can improve new driver safety. Having supported Graduated Licensing in our submission, we were pleased to see the House of Commons Transport Select Committee report on Novice Drivers also recommend that Ministers consider the evidence for implementing GL measures in the UK.                 Although the UK Department for Transport is supposed to co-ordinate the work of its' executive agencies like DSA, in practice this does not happen. We continue to call for a joined-up approach where the Department's Agencies co-operate with each other. This fits with our demand for departmental pay instead of the current situation where each Agency pays different salary for the same work.                 We also believe it is important that there is better collection and co-ordination of road accident statistics so that these may be more readily used to inform road safety policies. It may be that there is a role for similar co-operation and co-ordination at European level.                 We continue to oppose privatisation of the Driving Test. Our belief is that such functions belong within democratically accountable public sector institutions. Only yesterday we had a meeting with DSA senior officials to discuss what they are doing about road safety in the future. It has taken them 18 months to come up with proposals for road safety. Much is based upon European Directives ,the real problem we believe is that the agenda is driven by money, on how much can be charged to customers, i.e. The general public, Government is unlikely to deliver a penny towards this. DSA is a trading fund it runs on fees paid to it so it is obvious who will pay for the new regulations. We have consulted during July and August with 24000 PCS civil service members at 1400 meetings across the UK on the need for further action to bring a negotiated settlement. We now ballot our members for strike action and we are confident we will get a yes vote from our 304,000 members on 22nd October when the ballot ends. So we are poised for strike action to defend public service workers whose Pay is being held down to 2% while inflation is running at over 4%. Along with PCS members, all public service workers in the Post Office, Local government workers, teachers and further education lecturers are being attacked and we hope to take co-ordinated action with them possibly in November. We are therefore pleased to support the motion setting up the European Trade Union Group for Driving Examiners. PCS welcomes the opportunity to work with colleagues from France, Belgium Luxembourg and Netherlands in order to reduce the death and injury of citizens on our roads.

Intervention of Anne-Marie PERRET president of EPSU to the First European Trade Unions' Conference for Driving Licence and Road Safety. Dear Comrades, I Would like to give you the fraternal greetings of EPSU (European Public Services Union) and those of the FGF-FO where I work as federal secretary. Because of an overloaded agenda, Gérard Noguès could not be with us and he asked me to apologize and to wish you a successful congress and general assembly. I feel really happy and proud to be here with you today at least for 2 main reasons : ·                Firstly because I don't forget that the SNICA-FO is my union ·                Secondly because I admire what you are doing in terms of cooperation with our colleagues from other European countries. The presence and active participation of our Belgian, British and Luxemburger colleagues are a strong sign of your will to set up a European trade union group for driving tests and road safety to submit common demands to the EU decisional institutions. Your initiative shows how Europe which used to be considered distant, virtual and difficult to understand, is a tangible reality which impacts our daily life as citizens, workers and unionists. Furthermore to the diversity and complexity of the EU, we are aware that we are facing the same problems, the same fights, and that the challenges are of the same kind. So, what's new in our respective countries ? Our governments, whatever their political colour can be, follow the same neo-liberal lines, which lead to the outsourcing, the privatisation  of public services, to the withdrawal of the State administration. The State…. Is in bad shape… it has become insolvent and powerless, according to Sarkozy. In Belgium, our friends wonder whether the State still exists. In Luxemburg, the civil servants have known better times. In the UK,  we all remember how Mrs Thatcher destroyed public services, labour and fundamental rights. Everywhere in Europe, public services are under threat and the civil service, even if it is not part of the EU competences suffers direct or indirect impacts of the regulations or decisions taken at the EU level. Currently, in many European countries, we see how similar are our demands as civil servants and public employees : ·                Stop jobcuts ·                Pay increases ·                Purchasing power ·                No to precariousness ·                No to privatisation ·                Yes to adequate resources and decent working conditions. In France, the last statements made by Sarkozy and his Prime minister meet neither our demands in terms of pay, nor the question of financial means for the national administration to fulfil its missions and the “modernisation” of the civil service management consists essentially in not replacing civil servants when they retire. In the UK, our British comrades are currently involved in a national dispute and the members are being balloted in a consultative ballot on whether they go to a national strike action to take place next November, to protest again jobcuts, office closures, below inflation wages. PCS urges the government and the administration to negotiate. As unionists, if we look at the challenges and threats on living and working conditions of the employees we represent, we can't stay like that without reacting. We have principles and values to defend and to promote, demands to be taken into account. For all these reasons, there is a need to create transnational solidarity, and this is what we are trying to do from our European federation. The aim is to defeat the neo-liberal policies of the EU and to seek all together how we can promote social justice. Dear Comrades, On all these issues, EPSU wants to oppose but wants to propose too. We can't stay without reacting to the dismantlement of public services. But we must propose alternative strategies and develop our own demands. Our main points are : 1.                for the citizen, Europe does not only means free movement of goods, capital, services and people. Europe means a shared vision for prosperity and welfare for all. 2.                we need quality public services for the effectivness of the fundamental rights of the citizens, aiming at cohesion, equality, sustainability, gender equality, equal treatment for the workers and full employment, 3.                Public services principles as universality, continuity, accessibility, accountability and users' protection are shared all over Europe and are part of our common values, 4.                Europe must revise its competition rules so that future generations can have access to quality public services based on solidarity As you can note it, there is a lot of work ahead to be done. And more than ever, we need to coordinating our actions and activities. You decided to set up the European Trade Union group for driving tests and road safety, along with a common charter to be disseminated to other European colleagues, promoting a concrete and ambitious cooperation. On behalf of EPSU, may I wish you a “good trip” ? it seems to be the most appropriate way of encouraging you according to what you are as driving examiners ! Dear Comrades, I wish you all the best for your daily action in your unions. I wish you a fruitful congress. Thank you again for welcoming me, thank you for your attention.