Workers' Liberty

Metronet

Infrastructure consortium Metronet is in administration. Metronet workers held solid strike action, backed by other grades of Tube workers, and forced guarantees.

But the big issue is still the Public-Private Partnership. Workers need not just job guarantees but the reversal of PPP and the reintegration of a public Underground. The unions - in the first place, RMT - need to strike against PPP itself, confronting the anti-union laws that make ‘political’ action illegal.

Ticket Office Carnage

London Underground plans to close 39 ticket offices and slash the opening hours of virtually all the rest. This will cause 270+ job cuts, de-staff our already under-staffed stations, and increase the workload and vulnerablity of all Tube workers.

Union head offices were slow to respond, but rank-and-file activists have been talking to members, leafleting the public, lobbying politicians. Pressure from members got RMT to tell LUL to scrap the cuts or be in dispute. The company replied by delaying rather than withdrawing the cuts, but RMT backed off from declaring a dispute anyway. Mistake.

We now need to push the unions towards dispute, and to ensure that all grades understand that this is a fight for everyone.

Silverlink Transfer

A dozen or so stations are to transfer from Silverlink to London Underground. LUL sees this as a chance to import some of the private railway’s dodgy practices onto the public Tube. It plans to use private security guards and agency staff, and to have mobile Station Supervisors to cover several stations.

The transfer was announced nearly a year ago, but LUL has only just declared its intentions, and the unions have only just risen to the fight. LUL’s plans will no doubt be the thin end of a thick wedge: workers in every grade and location have reason to fear that agency labour and stations de-staffing will be used to undermine their jobs.

Region In Crisis

RMT’s London Transport region has more than its share of internal problems.

Activists have had to insist that violence around union meetings is unacceptable and that basic democracy must be upheld. It is in the nature of union bureaucracy that some people try to cling onto positions and power by whatever means they feel are necessary. Where rank-and-file members refuse to let them, they deserve our support.