Central trains
Guards on Central Trains are due to strike on Saturday 24 February in their continuing campaign against the imposition of a computerised rostering system called Crewplan. The next stage of the campaign was supposed to have been a ban on collecting revenue. However management threatened a 50% reduction in wages for anybody not collecting fares. They declared that there would be no rest day working or overtime for guards. This forced the guards to re-think their strategy.
The guards’ next step was decided when they received a gloating letter from the Banaghan gang, telling them that assistant ticket examiners had received commission on their ticket sales whereas guards had been just short on theirs and that if they had not taken their previous strike action they probably would have got the commission too! The guards responded with a swift two fingered salute and renewed their strike action.
In the meantime ASLEF have refused to sanction any rest day working as from the 24 February although this has nothing to do with Crewplan. As for the minority of drivers in RMT repeated calls for them to be balloted have fallen on deaf ears.
The intransigence and bloody mindedness of management suggests we are in for a long struggle. In addition to getting ASLEF into the dispute and balloting the RMT drivers the campaign also needs to broaden out to tell the travelling public what we are fighting for.
NCP
On 21 February GMB-organised parking attendants and traffic wardens in Enfield took their fourth day of strike action to demand that their employer, National Car Parks, recognises the union. Over 80% of the workforce, mainly composed of African migrant workers, are in the GMB, and on an 85% turn out they voted 100% (none of these figures are typos!) for strike action after NCP refused them recognition and suspended their union rep.
On the 21st, the workers demonstrated outside the headquarters of 3i, the firm that owns NCP, after hearing that it plans to sell the company to Australia’s Macquarie Bank - a deal that would produce a profit of £245m, in just 18 months.
NCP management wants to protect its ability to bully workers into ever more stringent targets on tickets, fines etc, penalising drivers to up its profits. It has met its workers’ attempts to organise with bullying and harrassment. We need to meet them with solidarity. See www.gmb.org.uk
