Alistair Tice, Yorkshire Socialist Party
Over 200 workers at rail engineering firm Wabtec in Doncaster began a week-long strike on 27 June against cuts in terms and conditions and a well-below inflation pay rise. They are mostly Unite members, but with RMT have coordinated ballots and action, having already struck on 10-13 June.
Management claim they have offered a “substantial” pay rise. Lie no. 1. Workers had no pay rise at all last year. Of the 8.25% rise covering two years, 1.25% is for the National Insurance rate rise, and it is all conditional on accepting cuts, such as to tea breaks and wash time, equivalent to another 3%. So in reality this “substantial” wage rise is 4% over two years when RPI inflation has already hit 11.7%!
Lie no. 2. Management claim: “The majority of our employees are clearly in support of this plan.” No way. The majority have now signed the new contract because they were threatened in one-to-one interviews with ‘fire and rehire’. But they then signed a union statement to say that they were forced to sign “under duress”.
US-owned Wabtec have cut the workforce by two-thirds over the last 18 months and clearly expected the remaining 250 or so workers to accept these cuts under fear of redundancy. In a further attempt to intimidate, management sent them all a letter making false allegations about the previous strike picket.
None of this has worked. Over 150 union members were on the picket. The strike is solid and more action will be called if the bosses don’t back down.
