Fighting against looting bosses
Midlands RMT member
As we approach winter, and working-class families are trying to hold off switching the central heating on for as long as possible, RMT transport union members are taking several days more strike action in defence of our jobs, pay and conditions.
This national railway dispute is the responsibility of the Tory government, Network Rail management and the Train Operating Companies (TOCs), which have all decided that railway workers must give up terms and conditions and forgo a real-terms pay rise.
It is plain to see that, taken in the context of the wider situation, railway workers, like so many others, are being told to take a pay reduction in order to re-inflate the profits of the rail industry bosses and shareholders.
But worse than this is the fact that the TOC employers intend to, in effect, ‘wipe the slate clean’ and replace many current roles with new ones, with inferior pay and conditions. Thousands of Network Rail maintenance jobs are to be scrapped, wholesale changes to working practices are to be introduced without agreement with rail unions, and pay is to be driven down across the board.
One area the government isn’t planning to touch is the bloated salaries of top railway executives, shareholder dividends, and the astronomical profits of the parasitical Rolling Stock Leasing Companies (ROSCOs).
RMT recently revealed the shocking scale of profiteering which goes on at a time when we are supposedly ‘broke’.
Bosses enrich themselves
While we are told that we must tighten our belts and lose precious terms and conditions, £152 million was paid out in dividends by the ROSCOs, £235 million profit went to maintenance contractors, and no less than £600 million was siphoned out of the railway into the pockets of the TOC shareholders.
Every penny of this loot was created by the efforts of the railway workforce. And they expect us to accept that there’s no money for a pay rise!
We deserve safe and secure jobs, we deserve to be paid properly for the work we do, and if the employers want to change our jobs then this should be agreed with the rail unions and not imposed against our will.
We’re not asking for the earth but we will fight on until we get what we want. We will also continue to demand the democratic socialist nationalisation of the rail industry.
