Off The Rails Spring 2006

Shorter Working Week: Who Pays the Price?

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.

Death On The Tracks

A contractor has gone to jail for killing four track workers at Tebay in February 2004 through deliberate tampering to save money. But the root causes of the tragedy are still in place.

Mark Connolly, boss of MAC Machinery Services, got 9 years. He had disconnected the brakes on two wagons because the hydraulic systems were knackered and he would not spend the money to fix them. He tried to cover his tracks by filling cables with ball bearings to seem like brake fluid.

Fighting the Fascists

The BNP has launched a trade union. It doesn't have much more than a paper existence, and what paper there is doesn't mention the BNP, but rail workers will be familiar with some involved. Remember Jay Lee, expelled from ASLEF? Or Pat Harrington, kicked out of RMT? He is now president of ‘Solidarity’, this would-be union "for patriotic and nationalist British workers".

Rail unions & politics

RMT held a conference on working-class representation in January. Since its expulsion from Labour, RMT has been searching for a way to use its political clout in the best interest of its members. Requests have come in to finance some of the most unlikely candidates, including nationalist and reactionary parties and individuals.

Fingerprints please!

What is this - CSI: Railways?! Rail workers in many grades and locations are resisting employers’ moves to make us book on and off using fingerprints.

Amey set up a 'pilot' at the Port Talbot resignalling scheme, without consulting the workforce or the union, just getting the nod from a project manager.