RMT still undecided on further action

150 rail workers attended a meeting in Birmingham on Monday 23 January, to hear a national dispute report back from the RMT leadership on the recent deal offered to Train Operating Companies (TOCs) and the earlier one offered to, and rejected by, Network Rail (NR) workers.

The unanimous feeling of the room was that the TOCs deal should be rejected, with the discussion centring on whether or not to put it to a referendum. Almost all speakers from the floor clearly said it should not be. The General Secretary (GS) summarised the options: if it wasn’t put to a vote, the press would try to portray us as undemocratic, if it was, and was accepted, it might mean the end of the RMT on the railway, and hence the end of the RMT, because there would be so many job losses and a general demoralisation of those remaining due to the bonfire of terms and conditions the deal involves.

Earlier, the GS had characterised the membership as being split into three equal parts: an activist group, that was always up for a fight, a third that loyally acted on the union’s instructions, whatever those instructions were, and the rest who wanted to call off the action. The GS didn’t make the connection, but if those ratios are real then the solution to the referendum conundrum is there in his numbers; the first two groups give us the majority to continue the action without the need for a referendum - fearing, as we do, the dissolution of the union. It would then be up to the activists to promote that reasoning amongst the membership, and points to the need for them to get out amongst the general public to counter any negative news coverage.

On the question of what we should do next things were generally much vaguer and there was only one definite proposal from the floor for escalating the action; it got some support from members, but not from the union’s president. He criticised its call for strikes every Saturday on the basis of comments made by rail minister Huw Merriman to the transport select committee last week that the financial hit was greater on weekdays.

What Merriman actually said was that costs to the railway due to industrial action were £25 million on a working day and £15 million on a weekend day. He also mentioned a figure of £700 million as an impact on the economy at large, but didn’t break that down to specify which day of the week had a greater impact. Without that level of detail and factoring in the fact that the greatest post-Covid increase in passenger numbers has been in leisure travel, I think the case can still be made that Saturday strikes will have the largest effect on the economy as a whole.

The president did offer the suggestion, amongst others, of action around the March budget which would also coincide with the grim anniversary of P&Os' horrendous mass sacking of seafarers. Another member suggested all the unions could coordinate their actions to be on alternate days, so there would be several days of strike reporting on TV in one week for each union to make its case without any union being overshadowed by the action of other unions on the same day.
 
The GS made a few more points: that the union would try to ensure neither side of the dispute, NR and the TOCs, would settle until both had acceptable deals; there was going to be more money available for hardship payments; that we had to support Aslef's strike on 1 and 3 Feb, hence the strike of RMT drivers on TOCs; and that there were ongoing discussions at the TUC for more coordinated action, and a national demonstration.