The longer the picket line, the shorter the strike!

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

Picket lines from our February strike (see some pictures here) were some of the best-attended and liveliest we've had for years. Let's make sure the next set of pickets are as good, if not better.

As the old labour-movement saying has it: "the longer the picket line, the shorter the strike!" In other words, better-supported strikes with better-attended picket lines are over quicker because management gives in sooner!

The list of picket locations is available on the RMT London website here. Remember, a strike is not an extra rest day, it's us flexing our muscles and attempting to halt our bosses' disastrous cuts plan. Get down to your branch's pickets for as much of the day as you can.

For younger workers and new starters, people for whom this may be their first strike, the very concept of a picket might seem strange. In an age when large-scale strikes are relatively rare, that unfamiliarity is understandable, but that makes it all the more important that more experienced activists and those with an understanding of our history explain the role and importance of picketing.

A picket line is the physical expression of a strike - a group of workers mobilising outside their workplace, to broadcast the message of the strike to our employers and the public. But most fundamentally of all, a picket line should aim to persuade any colleagues coming into work not to cross, and to join the strike. Not everyone who's thinking about coming in during the strike will be a management toady or a hardened scab. A lively, well-attended picket line full of confident strikers who can make their cases persuasively can convert a potential scab into a striker.

The RMT published some helpful advice on effective picketing in advance of the February strike — read it here, and good luck with your picketing!

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