Aslef has called a strike on 15 TOCs for 5 January. It is good further action has been called, and the timing will likely lead to a whole week of disruption given it’s sandwiched between RMT strikes on 3-4 and 6-7 January.
But Aslef has already held several 24-hour strikes and doesn’t seem any closer to victory. And its members continue to cross RMT picket lines to work on RMT strike days.
To force the railway employers back, we need to fight as a whole workforce – not on a union-by-union or grade-by-grade basis. Some in both RMT and Aslef make a virtue of striking separately, arguing that it maximises disruption whilst minimising loss of pay for members. That argument might have more weight if the separate strikes were part of a consciously designed and agreed-upon coordination strategy, rather than being the product of Aslef’s dogged refusal to strike on the same days as RMT. But even then, the arguable benefit of spreading the disruption slightly further doesn’t outweigh the major negative consequence of separate strikes in terms of an entrenchment of sectional consciousness.
A serious approach to respecting each other’s strikes means RMT members refusing to cross Aslef picket lines too, something it’s somewhat riskier to do in situations where RMT guards, station staff, etc., aren’t covered by Aslef’s driver-only ballots. But in the midst of the biggest upsurge in workers’ action for a generation, with the future of our industry on the line, it’s surely time to be bold and ambitious.
