Workers' Liberty

Off The Rails has produced a bulletin for the current dispute on Central Trains about Crewplan. Click 'read more' to read the text; 'download' to view, download and/or print it (2 A4 pages, PDF)

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guards: keep up the fight - drivers: get involved

Three days of solid strike action by senior conductors has shown Central Trains management that RMT is serious about stopping Crewplan. ASLEF should now ballot too. It will affect their members as much as it will the senior conductors!

There seem to be some foot-dragging arguments from ASLEF as to why they shouldn’t get involved. For instance, there’s the one which says that it won’t affect most drivers because it won’t be introduced at Birmingham New Street and Nottingham (by far the two largest depots). But do you really think that if the company get it in at the smaller depots they won’t then come for the rest of us?!

Management are trialling Crewplan at the smaller depots. This is a divide-and-conquer tactic. ASLEF can’t accept it only for the smaller depots, otherwise when they bring it in at the others, what reason could we give to block its introduction? We certainly can’t say that it is OK for the smaller depots but not for Nottingham and New Street! The smaller depots need to know that the bigger depots are opposed to Crewplan.

Maybe some ASLEF officers hope that RMT will exhaust itself in dispute then ASLEF can bemoan the fact that because RMT isn’t striking they won’t either. So what would ASLEF accept if they don’t fight this?

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What is the main issue? Management has broken an agreement that rostering is a negotiated item. They have refused to negotiate with the unions on the introduction of Crewplan. They have torn up the machinery of negotiation. They should not be allowed to do this without a fight. If we won’t defend this one, what will we defend? You can be sure that this won’t be the last attack on our terms and conditions.

If you don’t see the importance of making management stick to agreements, then think how likely it is that management will come after some other agreement if we have let them ignore this one. Or ask the guard at Leicester how it feels to apply 18 times for the same app day, or consider how difficult it would make things if you weren’t notified about those 2 app days you wanted to tack onto the end of your week’s leave until 2 days before you were due to take them?

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Why are Central pushing so hard to get Crewplan in? It is near the end of the franchise: why don’t they just wait until then, what is the big hurry?

One possibility, is that if they get it in there will be nothing to transfer across when the franchise changes hands. It will make life a lot simpler for management, getting rid of all those troublesome local agreements like walking time. And with harmonisation across the company what need will there be for LLC release?

There has been talk that Crewplan has been suspended until after the franchise has been transferred. But at the moment that is all it is: talk. We need to prepare now to take industrial action against it. If it is suspended all well and good, if not we will just have wasted another month trying to confirm or deny rumours.

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Banaghan and gang are certainly going all out on this one: they want to win. Why else would they risk such a dispute? They have already qualified for the second stage of tendering to operate two of the new franchises that will be created when Central Trains is broken up.

Unless Crewplan is part of their tender application? It is already up and running on Midland Mainline, also owned by National Express and one half of the new East Midland franchise, (Central Trains being the other half). This would make financial sense. Crewplan would free them from costly negotiations over local agreements when transferring staff into the new franchise. With Crewplan in place, National Express might be able to deliver the lowest- cost bid.

If so, we are in for a hard fight. That is why we need a strategy. It is time that the RMT started acting like an all-grades union and balloted its driver members too. And ASLEF must join the fight.

RMT has provided a lot of information for guards about how the dispute is going, and the quick response of the General Secretary to management lies was helpful. But if this becomes an extended dispute, we will also need to produce leaflets for the public explaining our case. This is RMT policy as of 2006, proposed by Off The Rails supporters.

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RMT seems to think that Sundays, public holidays and the dates of big sporting events are the best days for strikes. But is this really the case?

Maybe the union’s leaders think that it has to give those taking part in the action an extra reason to do it. Isn’t it enough that we vote to go on strike in the first place? Certainly on Central, experience tells us that a strike call will be well supported, and this one had a six-to-one majority. If we are going to lose money, it is better to have the most effective action possible ie. the most likely to get management to concede defeat.

On Central, the strikes have been held on two Sundays and one public holiday. This affects leisure travellers mainly, who always get messed about on Sundays and public holidays and are likely to just grin and bear it. Instead, we should strike on work days, to hit business. That way we can add the pressure of thousands of complaining businesses to our campaign.

On Central, some people never work Sundays anyway, so the financial burden is not spread across the workforce fairly.

One-day strikes by guards on the same weekday for three consecutive weeks would be the best way to share the burden. If we could get ASLEF to do the same on the weekday after the guards’ action, we would effectively get six days strike action but individual members would only lose two days pay per month.

To achieve this we need RMT reps, activists and members to talk to ASLEF members about the dispute at every opportunity. We should invite members of ASLEF to our branch meetings to discuss Crewplan and how we are going to fight it. Following this we should form joint union strike committees to put control of running the dispute into the hands of the members affected.

United and effective - we can beat Crewplan!

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crewplan160107.pdf	715.28 KB