John Reid, Retired former RMT executive member
London Underground unions RMT, Aslef and Unite are taking action between 23-28 July to fight savage attacks on working conditions, pensions and jobs.
The London Underground is the only major metro system in the industrialised nations not to receive a subsidy.
The government is looking for £600 million of ‘savings’, which includes 600 jobs going on stations and hundreds of jobs going in other areas of work, including train drivers and engineering.
This will result in unstaffed stations, leading to less safe travel. Transport for London admits that 1,813 sexual offences were reported to the police in one year from 2021-22, and yet these enormous cuts are still being imposed. Maintenance cuts will lead to an unsafe system for staff and passengers.
After seven days of strikes by the RMT on stations, six all-grades, management finally agreed to review the cuts and their impact on weekend working. But no sooner did they agree a process to review them than they announced a further programme to cut another 200 station jobs and demand hundreds of workers apply for their own jobs. No protection of substantive earnings is on offer.
The attacks also include savage cuts in pensions. Strike action by the RMT held these attacks at bay for a year, but a timetable to move workers into the local government pension scheme is now imminent. Bosses are also ripping up agreements on sickness and attendance policies – a bullying manager’s charter.
Workers on the underground have won reasonable working conditions from years of struggle. The Tory government wants to defeat workers who have stood up against cutbacks from both Tory and Labour administrations. If the rail workers are defeated it will make other attacks further down the line easier. Fighting these attacks must go hand in hand with fighting the Tory minimum service levels legislation.
London Labour mayor Sadiq Khan has a choice: join with London Underground workers to fight these cuts and refuse to carry them out, or side with the Tory government to push them through.
It is good that RMT, Aslef and Unite are unified in action. This is a battle that our members and our class must win.
