Following members’ resounding rejection of the latest ‘offer’ by the rail bosses (see ‘RMT: time to escalate and generalise the fightback’) rail union RMT has announced more strike dates: 16, 18 and 30 March and 1 April.
The significance of the 16 March strike day is made clear in the letter to members from general secretary Mick Lynch:
“This is an important date, which is the day after the Chancellor’s budget and the mobilisation of thousands of workers taking strike action on 15 March at a mass demonstration in London by those workers on strike.
“We will run the national railway on 15 March to facilitate this mobilisation of our fellow striking workers and carry out our own strike action the following day.
“This will be a powerful message of workers’ solidarity, but also a message to the government that they must fund our railway properly in order to create a resolution to this dispute.”
This announcement makes it all the more important that members in all other unions with a live ballot campaign for their unions to strike together and march together on 15 March in central London.
That could mean hundreds of thousands of striking workers filling the streets outside parliament while the Tory budget is presented. What better answer to the Tories’ plans to further attack workers – and what better pressure on Keir Starmer as he responds to the Tories!
It also raises the stakes with the potential scale of the action mid-March – imagine the effect of a 48-hour coordinated strike involving both 15 and 16 March!
15 and 16 March
Currently striking on 15 March:
National Education Union (NEU), PCS civil service union
Currently striking on 16 March:
RMT on the railways, NEU, University and College Union in the universities
There are also many localised strikes taking place, including Amazon workers in the GMB in Coventry on 15 and 16 March, as part of a week of action.
