Socialist Party members in the RMT
At the last minute, the transport union RMT’s leadership called off all planned strike action on the railways, after an offer of talks from the rail employers.
There are mixed feelings about the decision among our members across Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies (TOCs). There is disappointment among leading Network Rail reps, who we understand demanded that the action remain on.
The decision to call off strike action should always be carefully weighed up, and never taken lightly. After such a monumental effort by our reps and activists to build for the week-long period of action across Network Rail and the TOCs, reps and members need to know exactly what, if anything, has been conceded by the bosses.
We understand that the imposition of organisational change proposals was suspended. This shows that the strike action has been effective and did push them back.
But the central theme of the dispute has been to secure our jobs and conditions, and to win a substantial pay rise. In order to achieve this, the employers must now totally withdraw their plans to decimate the industry. They plan to close thousands of booking offices, to unilaterally reorganise and regrade our jobs, and to hold down our pay, while continuing to pay out dividends and bonuses to shareholders and senior management.
So far, we have taken several days of national industrial action, and we were about to ramp it up.
So it is concerning that by calling off the action for two weeks for talks we have in effect suspended all strike action for a minimum of four weeks, due to the legal requirement for us to give two weeks’ notice for any future strike action.
But now that the decision has been taken, let’s hope that we are able to extract some significant concessions. If, on the other hand, it appears that the talks were simply an attempt by the employers to demobilise our members, stall us, and even to sabotage our re-ballot, we must prepare to call further strike action as soon as possible.
RMT London strike
A day of strike action by RMT members on London Underground and Overground is going ahead on Thursday 10 November. Labour mayor Sadiq Khan is overseeing the decimation of jobs and pensions by Transport for London, wielding the Tories’ axe for them, as hundreds of millions of ‘savings’ are planned.
