Bob Pearce wrote:
> If they are employed by Yarra Trams (for example), and YT does not tender

> for the continuing franchise to operate the trams, do the trammies get

> redundancy payments?

>

> Assuming that a new company (let's call it City Travel - CT) is awarded he

> right to operate the trams, and the former YT people now belong to the new

> company CT, are they employed on a totally new contract?

>

> Do the conditions of the former contract extend over to the new company?

>

Generally the franchise contract also stipulates that operations
employees are part of the deal - their contracts are 'rolled' over to
the new operator along with the rolling stock leases.
If it was a true 'private' operation, the incoming operator would not
get the employees OR the rolling stock - you could have complete chaos
as the outgoing operator burns some cash by holding onto the operations
employees and the rolling-stock, to see how desperate (and how high a
price) they can get for those assets.

In practice I bet you will find that the employee's are not actually
employed directly by the franchisee but a 'shelf' labour hire company -
and that company would be handed from the old to the new operator,
instead of 1000's of new contracts having to be entered all at once.

Keeping the operations employees in a government 'labour hire' company
would in many ways defeat the entire purpose of the privatization
process in the first place - to get all those people of the government's
'public service' employee books.

Corporate stand-off's do happen - Virgin Blue was playing that game
with Sydney Airports for something like a year over the old Ansett
terminal, SAC assumed that Virgin would want to move out of their 'Tin
Shed' at any cost. Virgin didn't like the price and stayed put in their
tin shed terminal. For many months (a year ?), Sydney Domestic terminal
two stood mostly idle.