Rail unions

By a tube worker The RMT union has declared that it is in dispute with London Underground management over pay. The union is balloting its members for action and the result will be released on 3 September. During recent pay negotiations management had offered 3.2%, which the union rejected as inadequate. The management's response has been to impose a smaller amount of just 3%. Underground workers are furious at both the meagre amount of extra cash in pay packets, and also the calculated snub the management have made to the workers and the union. Management have also gone back on a promise to...

There is a growing anger over pay in many areas, but particularly in the public sector. NUT members have taken industrial action in London, and the lecturers' union NATFHE nationally. The FBU looks on course to take action and RMT Tube members are being balloted. We should use this mood to co-ordinate union action and build Public Sector Alliances. It may even be possible to organise coordinated one-day strike action across a number of unions. Tube workers vote for action on safety By a tube worker RMT is soon to ballot for renewed strike action on the Tube around privatisation. The ballot has...

Solidarity 3/9 - 25th June 2002 Council workers, firefighters, tube workers, train conductors, lecturers, air traffic controllers... Unions start to fight back Link the struggles! Firefighters demonstrate. London local government workers, members of UNISON, strike for two days, and British Museum workers and South Bank University lecturers for one day each. The Tube union RMT prepares to ballot for renewed strike action about privatisation, and local government workers across the country - TGWU and GMB as well as UNISON - ballot for action in a national pay dispute distinct from the London...

With rail strikes crippling train services in the south-east and set to spread, a strike brewing in Consignia (the new name for the postal service) and national strikes by benefits workers, people have been talking about a new "winter of discontent". The name "winter of discontent" refers to strikes in 1978/9 against the last Labour government (1974-79). Elected after an incredible wave of working class militancy brought down Ted Heath's Tories, the Wilson-Callaghan government failed to deliver for workers. The "Thatcherite" policies of massive cuts in the welfare state didn't start with...

Wednesday 3rd June: The RMT ballot result was on the news this evening when I was at work on a late turn. An 84% yes vote on a 47% turn out is a brilliant result, and shows that tube workers do not believe the hype which is being pumped out by the government via London Underground management. Ordinary rank-and-file tube workers understand only too well, by looking at the experience of the buses and the railways, exactly what happens when you get privatised. I have never been on strike before! As soon as I heard the result I started discussing it with any of my work mates I could find in the...

As we go to press, RMT and ASLEF members on British Rail and London Underground are balloting for a series of one day strikes over pay. The RMT wants a 6% rise. ASLEF — the train drivers’ union — want “a substantial increase.” If the RMT ballot is lost the responsibility lies entirely with the union’s unelected bureaucracy who have refused to really fight for a big yes vote, despite the decisions of the union’s elected Executive, or the feelings of activists on the ground. If the ballots do show majorities for action then we need action co-ordinated across both the unions and on British Rail...