Re: RCDrummond, Traffic Manager

demondriver44
Friday, March 15, 2002 11:02 AM

Murph,I'll talk to you about all this Board.v.Union stuff on 22nd
March by the line at Great Western,I was pretty involved in the early
70s.Peter E.I echo Murphs invitation,come to Melbourne,we'll look
after you,make sure you've got a couple of weeks at least.Any other
takers for a night by the Western line at Great Western watching the
trains go by next Friday night,just turn up,go through Ararat and
through Gt.Western and turn down Churchill Crossing Rd.left off the
Highway and then right at the railway,before the crossing,see you
there,we'll talk about trams[and the Muni,Murph will be there]Best
Regards to all,Peter Bruce.--- In TramsDownUnder@y..., "IS Edit"
<bobmurphy2@c...> wrote:
Peter,

Since you were a valuable participant in the struggle against the
proposed run cuts and other crazy things with the San Francisco
Municipal Railway in 1970, you well know what I'm like in a stoush. I
fight hard but seldom get personal and usually maintain a sense of
humour.

But it was class warfare of the English variety in the Melbourne &
Metropolitan Tramways Board. I'd never seen anything like it. I
thought it was like Monty Python but most of the people worked within
that social framework or at least did not fight the root cause. And
the Tramways Union was nominally Maoist but the relationship between
them and Tramways management was quite symbiotic.

Towards the end of the transport reform process following the
election of the Victorian state Labor Government in about 1980,
the "Task Forces" at the state Ministry of Transport which I was a
member of put forward a huge number of problem analyses with options
on how to solve the problems. Faced with the prospect of real change,
Tramways management and the unions that fought them were as one, and
voted almost every time for the least change option.

They were like cats in a bag all those years. Fighting each other
and needing each other to fight. Neither really wanted to win. And
none of them really wanted to fix the causes of the grievances. Both
tramways and union were merely vehicles for the movers and shakers to
play games for their own ends.

It was amazing.

And perhaps the tail end of the old Australian "cultural cringe",
now almost non-existent. (And why should they have cultural cringe,
for what they see in the US these days).

Next question old buddy. When are you coming down here to visit a
place you might decide to migrate to, because it is so good?

Cheers,

Bob Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter D. Ehrlich
To: TramsDownUnder
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 12:47 PM
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] Re: RCDrummond, Traffic Manager


Hi, gang!

R.T.,

your tales about RC Drummond are great reading! Thanks for the
humor...

Milantram


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