Giving up control: Devaluation of railway work in Luxembourg's fare-free public transportation system?

Abstract

Luxembourg's implementation of a nationwide fare-free public transport (FFPT) policy in March 2020 transformed the everyday work and imaginaries of railway accompaniment personnel who had previously been responsible for fare control. It also sparked debate among both workers and the public about the value of their work. Dialoguing with discursive uses of devaluation as a shorthand for specific hopes and fears about the future of transit work, this article explores railway workers' experiences and perceptions of the transition and proposes a new framework for conceptualizing devaluation. Drawing from ethnographic research with the Luxembourgish national railway agency, Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Luxembourgeois (CFL), this article interrogates what it means for accompaniment personnel to give up the task of fare control by tracing the effects on their work rhythms, interactions with passengers, sense of authority, and visibility. In the absence of fare control, accompaniment personnel continue to produce value for a broader public and largely see their own work as valuable, yet there has been a rupture in the social validation of their labor, which produces feelings of devaluation.