Sacrebleu! Swiss rail makes a change

The federal railways are suffering from a shortage of personnel. Foto-Service SBB

A staff shortage has prompted the Swiss Federal Railways to take an unprecedented step: they have eliminated a scheduled train service.

Train number 10327 will no longer leave Lausanne at 1655, arriving in the lakeside resort of Montreux at 1714. It is the first time a scheduled train service has been dropped in nearly 100 years.

The cancellation seems to deal a blow to a rail company that prides itself on reliability and punctuality.

Observers and rail companies outside Switzerland will no doubt wonder what the fuss is about. Train cancellations are, after all, part of daily life in other countries.

Dearth of drivers

The simple truth is that the Federal Railways don’t have enough train drivers to cope with a timetable that has offered an increasing number of services since its introduction in June.

“We are short of about 40 train drivers in the region of Lausanne and Geneva at the moment. In the whole of Switzerland, we are short of between 250 and 300 drivers,” Federal Railways spokesman Roland Binz told swissinfo.

He said it was difficult to predict whether other services might have to be cut as a result of the shortage.

“We hope we don’t have to cut any more but it depends on the state of the economy and the number of staff we have,” he said.

“At the moment, we are training about 200 train drivers and we hope to improve the situation as soon as possible,” he added.

There has been a dearth of drivers for some time, with the Swiss Federal Railways taking the step of hiring staff from abroad, in particular from Germany.

But it takes six months’ training before a foreign driver is ready to climb into the cab of a Swiss locomotive. For a beginner, the training takes 18 months.

Paucity of conductors, too

During the summer, there was a shortage of around 700 staff, with a lack of not only drivers, but also train conductors and sales staff.

Binz told swissinfo that it was very difficult for the Federal Railways to predict such a shortage or explain why it came about.

“We are offering many more services since the change of the timetable in the summer and on the other hand we’ve had a big fluctuation of staff recently. We’ve employed about 500 new staff since February and this makes the situation a little bit better at the moment,” he said.

“I think the problems relating to a shortage of staff will last till after the end of the Swiss national exhibition “expo 02″ because we need a lot of staff for the increased services. We hope that by the end of next year the problem will be solved and we have enough staff again,” he said.

Binz rejected the suggestion that the shortage was caused because the Swiss Federal Railways were no longer an appealing employer.

“I don’t think this is the case because we have a very attractive collective contract, which offers a 39-hour working week. We still have good salaries and for next year, we are offering the full cost of living adjustment,” he said.

However, the Federal Railways have not offered any real wage increase for next year, whereas other branches have agreed on rises of up to four per cent.

“That’s true for the moment but we are still negotiating with the staff unions and nothing has been decided,” Binz told swissinfo.

For the record, rail passengers have two alternatives for the defunct 1655 Monday-Friday from Lausanne.

They can take the earlier 1642 regional train or wait for the InterRegio service at 1700, which runs every day of the year and also offers a Minibar service.

by Robert Brookes