German rail company DB Regio will run Metro system

Dec 4 2009 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal

METRO bosses have asked a German railway company to take over train services in Tyne and Wear.

The Metro system will still be a public railway but many staff will be told today that they are likely to be transferred to DB Regio after the Germans were announced as the preferred bidder.

State-owned DB Regio beat an in-house bid to run trains after the Government ordered Nexus to put the service up for sale in exchange for £300m worth of rail investment.

The Government also agreed to pay Nexus anywhere up to £300m to hand to the Germans to run the train system. This is the same funds which would normally have been handed over each year to Metro.

The Germans are a controversial choice, with their sister company in Berlin recently bringing the capital to a halt after they were forced to suspend trains services following safety fears.

They eventually had to replace wheels on the entire fleet.

DB Regio is expected to sign a contract in January and begin running train services on April 1 for the next nine years.

Last night union bosses warned the company’s troubled worker relations history would make it difficult to trust the new bosses. “We have had assurances there will be no compulsory redundancies for the life time of the contract, but we wait and see,” union leader Stan Herschel said.

The RMT organiser went on to criticise Metro bosses and some MPs for “selling off a much-loved railway” when they should have fought to avoid the sale.

He said: “No matter what they say this is privatisation. Who owns the system is irrelevant. It is who runs it that matters and that is going to change.”

It is understood 400 staff will transfer under the job guarantee scheme TUPE plus, which safeguards employment conditions.