Steve Hedley is a candidate in the election for RMT London Regional Organiser. As the RMT in London is facing a big political and industrial fight against Tory mayor Boris Johnson and a potential Tory government intent on breaking the union and imposing pay cuts, this an important election. Steve spoke to Tubeworker, the bulletin produced by AWL tubeworkers.
Q: How do you see the role of Regional Organiser?
A: The London Transport region of the RMT covers everybody that was once employed by “London Transport”. The organiser should set up organisations of workers in the region to strengthen the union. The Organiser conducts talks over pay and conditions and does high level disciplinaries. But if I take on this job people should vote for me on the basis that it is fundamentally an organising role. The role is to build the RMT as a formidable fighting force in the region.
Wage negotiations are a reflection of the balance of forces on the ground. If a union’s strong, well-organised and militant, a better pay rise and better conditions are more likely.
Q: What are the RMT’s key tasks to prepare for and win the fights ahead
A: We need an industrial strategy in the short, medium and long term and we need a political strategy in parallel to it. We need to build up local, regional and national all-grades committees to co-ordinate effective action. These would be local committees of reps that meet to discuss strategy, but not official bodies. They would meet regularly, whether there was a dispute or not. Currently, the union is very reactive; we've got to build a position where we’re going on the offensive. To start these committees will be defensive but they should have an inherent offensive capacity.
Q: What would you do to bring about effective solidarity between grades so that even the most vulnerable workers win?
A: We are the only all-grades union on the railway. But too often recently we’ve acted like a single grades union, where each grade only wants to fight for itself. This is a result of the anti-union laws, which prevent workers in different companies taking action to support each other. The laws were part of capital’s deliberate, thought-out process of sowing division between workers. In addition to the all-grades committees mentioned above, and cross-grades meetings that all reps would be expected to attend, our task is to rebuild working class consciousness, not just as a grade or as a union, but as a class.
Q: The RMT is no longer affiliated to the Labour Party. What should the RMT in London concretely do to build working class political representation?
A: RMT policy is that the region should identify candidates that are worthy of working class support in elections. We need to implement this vigorously in the region. We should have a list of demands that are a minimum platform for anyone we would agree to support. As a union, we need to develop working class politicians. Today politics is almost entirely a middle class or upper middle class occupation, whereas years ago train drivers would become politicians.
Q: The number of members who are active in their workplace or attend their local branches is quite small. What would you do to build a culture of active involvement in the RMT?
A: RMT members are not all getting the same representation. This unofficial hierarchy needs to be broken down. If people aren’t going to branches, we need to go to workplaces to build the union. We need to have a two-way discussion, rather than reps turning up and delivering a speech and disappearing. We need to ask what would get people involved in the union — as the young members have been doing.
Q: How do you think democratic decision-making should work in the RMT?
A: I have a bottom-up philosophy. The leadership and reps cannot just reflect the opinion of members. They must be educational and opinion-formers. The union must engender the highest level of debate. But when a decision is voted upon, the union must stand by that decision. It is a problem when the leadership decides on strategies without consulting the members.
Q: Within the union, there is sometimes a dismissive attitude to women’s campaigns, LGBT campaigns, etc. How do these campaigns relate to building a strong union?
A: The major oppression in our society is economic oppression of the working class but we can’t ignore that within the working class some groups are oppressed. In the rail industry women are on 70% of men’s salaries. Non-whites suffer discrimination. LGBT people suffer harassment at work. Any call for equality is subversive because it is an impossible demand that the system we live under cannot fulfil. If all our campaigns can keep a class perspective then they’re well worth supporting and should be encouraged.
Comments
Bobby Law
Why has Tubeworker never mentioned the sacking of Bobby Law by Bob Crow? This is why there is an election for this position. If LUL had sacked someone in this disgraceful way Tubeworker would be calling for strike action for his reinstatement, and rightfully so. How much was Bobby paid in order to stop it going to Employment Tribunal? Also a number of Reps resigned from the Functional Council in protest. Again never mentioned.
Reply
At the time when the drawn-out disciplinary process against Bobby Law was going on, it would have been highly inadvisable to publish anything in print, including on a website, about the details, as to do so might have prejudiced fair dealing with the issue.
Tubeworker did make a general statement on the principle that we oppose violence within trade unions, which was the starting point of the disciplinary action.
It is utterly unacceptable for a union official to use violence against another union member. Tubeworker is not about to defend every detail of the way that the union's leadership dealt with this situation, but it is right for a trade union to take firm action against violence.
As we understand it, the amount of money that Bobby Law accepted from the union is subject to a confidentiality clause.
On the issue of the functional council members ... Four members of the Stations & Revenue Council resigned at a crucial point of the dispute over casualisation earlier this year. In doing so, they walked away from the thousands of stations and revenue members who they were elected to represent, despite the fact that their grievance was not against those members but against the union's leadership. Worse, they issued a call on other reps not to take their places - ie. to leave the council totally incapable of functioning. Fortunately, reps disregarded this plea and stepped forward to fill the positions.
Tubeworker's priority at the time was to promote, report on, and give ideas about the dispute, not to indulge people who had walked away from it.
Bobby Law
Bobby Law was once a very good regional organiser, but by the time he was sacked he was already past his best. The method of his dismissal was far from ideal, but he rejected every effort made by Bob Crow to return him to work in some capacity in the RMT. That painful and damaging episode is thankfully over and we have to prepare for the struggles to come; Steve Hedley is undoubtedly the most capable candidate. Under Steve's leadership the London Transport Region of the RMT will continue going from strength to strength.
The four Bob Law fans who resigned (or the recovering bobaholics as they've become known) have hardly been missed. It's a non-story. Let's get on with the real business of fighting the bosses.
FIGHT THE REAL FOE
THE Bobby Law affair is something that I thought we had, and hope we can put to bed.
The one thing that we can thank Bob for is the new stations functional commitee.
We have a new vibrant body that has given us "Platform" the new website and pushes out information by the truckload. We are at last getting the minutes of the meetings and general information from the sub commitees. We also get total support from the reps.
We can build on this by voting for Steve Hedley for regional organiser. He has already transformed our regional council from the chaos that it used to be into a fighting unit , as regional organiser he can take that success forward and build a real fighting region.
It is an absolute neccessity at present to have a united union. Steve can achieve this as he is not in any group or sects pocket. He tells it how it is, has no time for infighting and gets on with job of fighting the management.
I would urge every member to vote for Steve as I believe that by electing him we can turn away from the mistakes of the past and unite the membership around clear socialist policies.
Rick Grogan