Tubeworkers' second strike

Submitted by martin on 1 October, 2002 - 7:05

Workers on the London Underground, members of the RMT and ASLEF unions, are staging a second 24-hour strike over pay from 8pm on Tuesday 1 October to 8pm on Wednesday 2 October. Their first 24-hour strike, on 24-25 September, shut down the Underground completely. Read the Workers' Liberty Tubeworker bulletin for 1 October here.

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 02/10/2002 - 12:04

Elephant & Castle: big (10+), lively picket line, RMT & ASLEF, no-one crossed.

Charing Cross: three picketed the station. This is a first: the unions don't normally picket stations. It was well worth doing: the picket turned back four station staff. Similar reports from other branches which sent pickets to large stations eg. Edgware Road sent pickets to Paddington and Baker Street.

Leytonstone: Good, big picket. No scabbing. LUL called police four (?) times to deal with 'aggressive picketing', even though there wasn't any!!

Overall: No trains running at the start of the day. LUL managed to get a couple of trains running towards the end of the morning peak, and opened a handful of stations. This is just for the propaganda value, so they can claim the strike is weakening.

What should we do next?

There ought to be a joint unions reps and activists meeting next week.

Personally, if management don't move on the pay claim, I think we should call further action in the next pay period (a couple of weeks away) - perhaps two 24-hour stoppages in one week. The unions should also consider giving strike pay on the next days out, as losing the money is starting to hurt the lower-paid grades.

Until then, union reps and activists need to do a lot of talking to workers, particularly station staff. To counteract management's divide-and-rule tactics, it would be good to get some drivers going round stations, and some station staff going to depots. We should set up local strike committees to organise canvassing of staff, and to organise picketing so we can cover stations as well as depots.

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