Gary Harbord, Secretary, LU Train Grades, personal capacity
The transport union RMT’s strike on London Underground, 2-8 November, remains on.
Talks are ongoing. London Underground offered an average pay rise of 4.6%, worth up to 5.9% for the lowest paid, but strings attached mean that not everyone gets a consolidated rise.
The company’s plans are a threat to our collective bargaining, with management being able to arbitrarily impose the limit of what our members are paid (see Tube strikes are back: ‘No union could possibly agree’ at socialistparty.org.uk).
This is unacceptable for a large proportion of our membership and it remains our position that all pay rises in future should be fully paid and consolidated. We want a commitment from the company to work towards an ending of the pay bands and the introduction of ‘spot salaries’ (where all people in that grade are paid the same).
The hopes that some members had with a Labour government have quickly disintegrated. The Labour mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was quick enough to moan about the funding cut when the Tories were in power, but he’s done nothing to demand that the funding should be reinstated. Instead, he’s offering up the excuse of the alleged £22 billion ‘black hole’ that the New Labour government says it inherited.
Workers on London Underground generate billions of pounds for the London economy every year – it’s a nonsense to argue that the money’s not there.
What’s needed is political will to redistribute the wealth in society. That can only be done by implementing RMT policy “to work for the supersession of the capitalist system by a socialistic order of society.”
RMT members will continue to fight for a fully funded, publicly owned, democratically run, sustainable transport system in our capital.
- In a separate development, members of the RMT in the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) are facing attacks to their jobs, terms and conditions. The ERU deals with people under trains, derailments, fallen trees and network repairs. London Underground bosses have proposed a reduction of 10% in staffing levels, a reduction in team sizes from six to four, and the imposition of a new roster. This will lead to a significant risk to the travelling public. Consequently, ERU members have imposed an overtime ban from 30 October, with the threat of escalated action if management doesn’t back down.
