15 March will see another day of coordinated strikes, with teachers in the National Education Union, civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services union, and others striking together. There was, and is, potential to spread that coordination to make 15 March even bigger than the 1 February coordinated strike, and therefore even closer to something like a general strike.
The single best thing other unions can do to support and generalise that mobilisation is to join the strike. It's disappointing, therefore, that RMT has told us that we're specifically avoiding striking on 15 March so as not to disrupt the NEU's planned national demonstration on that day. It's doubly disappointing given that RMT kept out of the 1 February strike altogether.
A union statement notes that there is a "mobilisation of thousands of workers taking strike action on March 15th at a mass demonstration in London", so promises that "we will run the national railway on March 15th to facilitate this mobilisation of our fellow striking workers." This follows an apparent approach to RMT by some NEU officials explicitly requesting that RMT doesn't strike on the 15th.
Whilst a national rail strike would have disrupted rail transport to the NEU's demo, many NEU branches were already booking coaches to transport members and so would have been unaffected. And the difficulties and disruption are surely offset by the additional economic and political pressure placed on the government by rail workers joining teachers and civil servants on strike. The idea that the risk of a slightly smaller demonstration justifies RMT keeping out of the strike is ludicrous.
RMT is the union that, for many years, ritualistically brought a motion to the TUC congress calling on the TUC to "call a general strike". But now something like general strikes are actually taking place, the apparently most "pro-general-strike" union seems determined to sit them out!
Rail workers will join NEU members on strike on 16 March, but with PCS not striking that day, an opportunity for wider coordination on 15 March has been missed. There is still a prospect that RMT members on London Underground will strike on 15 March; let's hope that opportunity is not missed too.