Rail strikes taking on the Tories

RMT continuing the fight

RMT member in London

The rail union RMT’s disputes with Network Rail, the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) and London Underground (LU) are, in reality, disputes with the government.

The government, through the Department for Transport (DfT), is seeking to break the relatively good pay, pensions and conditions of rail workers. This is to reduce wage costs in the sector, but also as a warning to other workers that they should not expect to avoid pay cuts, in order to protect profits during a period of rampant inflation.

The disputes with Network Rail, the TOCs and LU all now cover the same issues: employment levels, pensions, flexible working and pay. The latest Transport for London (TfL) financial settlement with the DfT has brought pay squarely into that battle, with an agreement to put the DfT in the chair for future pay talks.

The government is demanding real-terms pay cuts of 8%-12% plus attacks on pensions and job cuts. This is already explicit in the offers made to members on Network Rail and the TOCs.

TfL has now set its stall out too. Senior managers will now receive bonuses for delivering cuts while funding for next year’s LUL pay round is set at a level equating to a pay rise of around 1.5%. TfL members still have not had a pay rise for 2022, and can look forward to more of the same.

RMT must continue to fight these attacks, and open up a discussion about how to step up the action. Already the timetables for job cuts and pension attacks have been pushed back by RMT’s strike action. It is welcome that Aslef has joined the pay battle on the TOCs. Aslef members on LUL should be demanding their union calls action using their existing ballot mandate against pension and pay cuts.

Generalise

But the situation now demands a step change from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and its component unions. Never has there been a more pressing need for the TUC to coordinate action, which would be a step towards a 24-hour general strike against a national governmental campaign of pay cuts. This could be done by every union coordinating action on its own pay issues. If the TUC will not act then a coalition of the willing is urgently needed.

If the Tories press ahead with their declared intention to clamp down even more viciously on the ability of workers to strike, that must be met with determined action by the whole trade union movement, with 24-hour general strike action.

The Tories are in crisis. Never before has a prime minister taken office with as little support as Liz Truss. Fewer people voted for her than the RMT has members! Less than a third of her own MPs backed her. The Tory government will continue to try to make working-class people pay for the crisis of British capitalism.

But the trade union movement united could force the government from power and ensure that the costs of the inflation crisis are not borne by working people.

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Aslef – ‘summer turning into a winter of discontent’

Aslef member in the West Midlands

With inflation continuing to spiral into double figures, the greed of energy companies profiteering during the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, this summer is truly turning into a winter of discontent for workers and working-class communities.

That’s why it’s inspiring to see Aslef, RMT and other unions keeping up the momentum of this surging strike wave.

The Train Operating Companies (TOCs) and Freight Operating Companies (FOCs) have had their snouts in the trough for too long. Since making deals with the government on the back of Covid, the bosses have been trying to sell off our collective bargaining in exchange for receiving their baseline recovery profit off the government.

We know the money is there, instead of being siphoned off in dividends to shareholders it should be used to uplift key workers. The Tories always bang on about having a ‘high-skilled high-paying economy’ but that seems only to mean the fat cats and bankers! This is the case for Aslef members who have had a real-terms pay cut for the past three years.

We should be proud to see strong picket lines across the country and the potential of our collective power as we withdraw our labour from twelve companies on 1 October: Avanti West Coast, Chiltern Railways, Cross Country, Greater Anglia, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, LNER, London Overground, Northern Trains, Southeastern, TransPennine Express and West Midlands Trains. East Midlands Railway will join on 5 October.

Between Aslef, RMT, TSSA and Unite on the railways, CWU and Liverpool and Felixstowe dockers, 1 October is going to be a great display of working-class power, with collectively over 170,000 workers all striking on the same day especially just before the Tory conference.

Joint action is not just an act of industrial solidarity – coordinating further strikes will be a practical necessity to limit the employers’ ability to try to strike-break, and will help to mobilise the wider workforce if our dispute is to be stretched out.

Our union must join the calls on the TUC to coordinate strike action across private and public sectors so we can all strike together – especially to defend the right to strike against any new anti-trade union measures. We must also demand the renationalisation of our railways and public utilities to be ran for the public good, not private profit.

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