Workers' Liberty

Rail workers continue to fight for shorter working hours. All of us should by now be on a (maximum) 35-hour week - then push forward to a 4-day, 32-hour week.

We need shorter working hours so that we can have a decent life outside work. But the employers want to keep on making profits out of us, so they resist our demands, or they insist that if we work for less time, then we either produce more or get paid less.

So this is not just an issue of whether we get shorter hours, but of who pays the price.

The bosses should pay. They can afford it: they have plenty of cash for their own over-inflated salaries, bonuses and hospitality accounts. And their profits come from our hard work to start with.

Not wanting to give up their life of luxury, the employers try to make us pay - through cuts in wages, reduced staffing levels, anti-social rosters, and 'productivity' measures that make us work harder. We have to fight for the shorter working week without strings.

We may not always be strong enough to win a totally strings-free settlement, but our starting point is what workers need. We should not go into a fight offering up a fall-back position before the opening skirmishes.

Here, OTR looks at some recent battles for shorter hours. We have to learn the lessons - both positive and negative - to make our future campaigns as effective as possible.

• Virgin Cross Country

  In 2002, RMT and Virgin Cross Country made a deal to cut Train Managers’ hours from 37 to 35 without loss of pay. Four years on, a dispute still rages as the company tries to cheat staff out of Sunday pay rates.

  Previously, Sunday hourly rate was normal rate +17.45%. When the 35-hour week came in, the normal hourly rate went up (it automatically does when hours are cut without loss of pay), but the company refused to increase the Sunday hourly rate. So it is now worth only normal rate +11.56%.

  Last December, RMT members voted for strike action, and the union called a series of strikes on Sundays. The first, on New Year's Day, saw 300+ Train Managers walk out and only around half of the normal service run.

  Virgin Digs In, Blair Helps Out

  Strikes were solid, helped by a series of dispute meetings and some good pickets. Virgin had to run an 'amended timetable' of less than 40% service. It used poorly-trained managers to do guard duties; paid strike-breakers £110+; even forked out a 200-mile taxi fare to get a manager from Plymouth to Birmingham to take a train out.

  The 'Labour' government backed Virgin, even giving it money to offset losses from the strikes. The SRA has given employers £23m in the last 3 years in this way. This makes no sense financially, only politically. As Virgin Cross Country boss Chris Gibb says: "How come we ended up with strikes over such a small amount of money? It was not just about money, it was about principle. We cannot go on paying a ‘little extra’ every time the company is threatened with strikes."

  Where Now?

  As we write, Train Managers have taken strike action on 11 Sundays. The union also held a strike on Friday 17th March, after admitting that its initial hope of victory by Sunday strikes alone had proved wrong.

  While the RMT’s strategy needed constant review, members were unsure what it was and had little control over it. Rank-and-file activists had wanted union-produced leaflets to give to the public from early on. Leaflets came eventually, but they came very late.

  Strikes are now suspended for talks. We must use this time to plan our strategy and assert rank-and-file control. Or we will end up having made big sacrifices for little gain.

• Network Rail Operational

  Way back in 2001, the Joint working Party (JWP) agreements for signalling and supervisory staff set out that the 35-hour week would be in place by March 31st 2006, if not earlier. this was confirmed in the 2004 pay settlement.

  You would think that five years was long enough to work out the maths, but no. Just months short of the deadline, NR was saying that workers could only have a notional 35-hour week - still working long hours, but with more of it counted as overtime, less as basic. A slightly higher hourly rate, but no more time off the job.

  RMT refused to accept this, insisting instead on banking the time into an extra rest day every 8 or 12 weeks. Eventually, in February, management agreed - but said they needed another 3 years to phase it in!

  So now we have a new JWP to look at implementing decisions of the old JWP! Lesson: Beware Joint Working Parties! Don’t allow management to use them to kick our demands into the long grass.

• Merseyrail Guards

  More restrictive rostering. An attack on sick pay. Loss of compensation days for rest days following leave. That was the price Merseyrail expected its guards to pay for their 35-hour week.

  RMT members voted by more than 95% (on a two-thirds turnout) for action, and held a series of well-supported strikes, starting in March 2005. ASLEF helped by writing to its members advising them of the long-standing principle of refusing to cross picket lines.

  Management made few concessions. By May, their latest, pathetic ‘offer’ was voted down 13-114. More strike dates were called.

  The dispute was ‘wrapped up’ in August. The slim majority to accept the company’s new offer (70-61) shows that even having won some improvements, there was still significant dissatisfaction, and willingness to keep fighting. It’s a shame that the union was not able to push this battle to further success.

• LUL Stations

  After years of fighting for it, Tube station staff finally won a 35-hour week, and the unions and management set about hammering out the details. The initial deal was agreed in a referendum late in 2004.

  From the start we were on the back foot by accepting that any cut in hours must be self-financing. In other words, the only way we were going to achieve our aim was to agree to a reduction in ticket office jobs.

  Why? Never mind all the money the company wastes on hair-brained initiatives or managers' salaries. It is not acceptable for business and government to argue on the one hand that workers' demands are unaffordable whilst on the other making billions in profit, or spending billions on wars that none of us support.

  Management knew which areas they wanted to attack, which were weaker than others. They chose to deal with these first and left better-organised ones to the end. We should have negotiated the rosters as a whole rather than letting the company take advantage of inexperienced reps, who were met with a fait accompli, a rejection of their objections as not meeting 'business needs'.

  It was clear from early on that LUL had its quota of staff cuts and nothing was going to distract them from it. When overall figures were presented, we realised - no surprise - that they had been dishonest about staffing levels. Nonetheless they claimed that most groups had agreed the new rosters.

  All this, coupled with a lack of information from the union, led to a situation in which half the members had given up the fight. The other half were spoiling for a strike over the staffing reductions, displacements and the imposition of inferior rosters.

  Following a ballot, the Executive voted for a strike on New Year's Eve: a mistake. Few pickets, head office closed, no organisation, little information. In short, a shambles, demoralising the membership even further.

  The strike a week later, on the other hand, was probably the strongest show of force station staff have ever pulled off - an indication of the depth of feeling.

  LUL, as usual, used unqualified staff to keep stations open, knowing HMRI would turn a blind eye. RMT’s Executive went for a referendum, urging us to accept a deal where LUL would 'safety validate' rosters, revisit staffing levels, and entertain appeals from those displaced. But only after imposing the rosters.

  Inevitably, members voted to accept. The result was a victory for the company and a kick in the head for the union. We know that they will be looking for further staff cuts next year so we need to be prepared so that the same mistakes are not repeated.

  If members have has more control over negotiations, there is less chance of defeat.

• LUL Service Control

  LUL used the 35-hour week to introduce some pretty nasty strings - job cuts and changes to grading, amongst others. So in December 2004, RMT balloted service control members, achieving a huge "yes" vote, and called two 24-hour strikes - New Year’s Eve and 3/4 January. There were frantic talks, and many members discovered from the press that the strikes had been called off late on Christmas Eve, as little information was coming from RMT HQ.

  There’s a problem with striking on New Year's Eve - we should hit the first day back at work in the city, rather than people having a good time - but the feeling on the ground was very strong, and the strike would have made a big impact. By calling off the strike, the union demobilised people, leaving us sat around waiting to see what happened next.

  The "fantastic deal" was put to referendum and accepted roughly 70% to 30%. Bearing in mind that letters went to every individual from Bob Crow, saying "this is the best deal we can possibly get", "we risk losing what we have gained if we reject this" etc., the 30+% voting against was very high, showing the level of dissatisfaction with the deal.

  Problems with the deal:

  1. There were significant job cuts. Most were absorbed by severance, but some Apprentices got displaced to stations jobs.

  2. Grading. The deal created 3 separate signallers’ grades (now ‘service operators’), plus service operator 4 (formerly senior signal op). Service Operator 1 is rostered posts at quieter cabins, 2 is rostered at busier cabins, 3 is reserve. But most ‘quiet’, SO1-rated cabins are single-person, with more lone working and more nights, and some eg. Amersham, Waterloo (W&C), have extra duties. Fair enough that reserves get a bit more because shifts are unpredictable. But we should oppose different pay rates for people doing basically the same job.

  3. Money. The deal didn't meet the long-standing claim to restore pay parity between drivers and signallers. SO3 (the highest rate for a S/Op in the cabins) has less pay than a driver. Union reps now justify this by saying that our previous, pre-Company Plan parity was before OPO. But new responsibilities and technologies have also been thrust into cabins! To add insult to injury, managers have done better out of this deal than lower grades - the opposite to how it should be!

  The deal’s implementation has been a shambles. Union reps on the implementation team have been less than forthcoming with information, leaving staff with long periods of uncertainty about whether they would have jobs as signallers. People have gone on severance without replacements being fully trained. So, from a situation where 18 months ago large numbers of people were being threatened with redeployment, management are now struggling to cover duties. In some areas, managers are having to cover service operator shifts (ha ha).

  This is a bad deal, badly implemented. Some signal operators - who were ready to take strike action at the end of 2004 - are so demoralised that they have left the RMT. It is going to take some time for RMT to regain lost ground. A good start would be leading a vigorous fight against some of the company’s new attacks - such as imposition of new technology which doesn't work well and makes the job harder.

  Some RMT reps, especially health and safety, are doing a great job on this, but it needs more central leadership. The re-founding of the regional RMT Service Control Grades Committee gives a good forum for service control reps and activists to organise ourselves. We should use it.