Rank-and-file Keep Stations Fight Alive

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

More thoughts following the recent reps' meeting

Rank-and-file union reps have made sure that RMT will keep fighting LUL’s attacks on station staffing levels.
At the recent reps’ meeting, the “top table” tried to persuade us that the latest draft rosters were the best we were going to get, and recommended that we accept them. But rep after rep outlined why their group’s rosters were not acceptable, and insisted that the union reject them and fight for more.

Local reps told negotiators that union members on the groups which stood to lose out felt very strongly about the de-staffing. Reps were clearly representing the sentiment of rank-and-file workers, and pleaded not to have to go back to their groups and tell them that RMT had accepted the rosters.

Full-timers tried to persuade reps not to be “afraid of change”. But reps replied that this was not merely a change, but an attack.

To their credit, the top table listened to the feelings of the meeting, and after a short adjournment, came back to propose a way forward. They would go back to management, tell them that these rosters were unacceptable, and demand that concerns be addressed through safety validation.

The full-timers were right about one thing. We will not get much more by talking to management. But that does not mean that we have to give up – rather, that we will need to take action. Some people think that station staff will not be willing to strike, because most of us face rosters that are OK. But it is a basic principle of trade unionism that “an injury to one is an injury to all”, and time and again Tube workers have shown willing to act in defence of colleagues.

In any case, we can be thoughtful and imaginative about the action we take – for example, an overtime ban across the system, with targeted strike action in the groups worst hit.

So what now? The danger is that having successfully kept the union in the fight, rank-and-file activists may now sit back and wait to be told of developments. We have to keep the ball in our own court, and insist on regular reports from negotiators.

At the same time, we should be doing our own organising – keeping up membership levels, making sure that everyone is ready to take action, and making particular effort to tell staff on the groups whose rosters are OK about the fate of those that are not.

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