By a tube worker
RMT’s ballot for strike action over pay on London Underground has come back with a huge mandate for action. On a turn out of about 50%, 2,271 (76%) voted for strike action and 705 (24%) voted against.
Tube workers are prepared for the strikes we need to force management to pay us our 4% from last year and improve their offer. Unfortunately, the union’s press release suggests that the leadership may be preparing to back down rather than fight.
It rightly notes that LUL dropped its insistence on linking pay with later running after the RMT began balloting - an example of how even threatening to fight can force concessions. But Bob Crow’s quotes in the press release suggest that the union leadership now sees the only problem with the offer as those “strings”. In fact the offer itself is crap - a three-year deal with rises each year only a fraction above inflation.
LUL has said that it will give the pay rise to members of those unions that have accepted the offer (so far, TSSA and the laughable BTOG). This is a stunt to undermine the RMT - and the union must get the facts and arguments out to its members to ensure that LUL’s attempt at bribery does not work
LUL management, and Mayor Livingstone behind them, want to take on and beat the unions in order to have a compliant workforce for the 2012 Olympics and beyond.
Other than RMT, the unions have pathetically allowed them to do so - TSSA having accepted the rubbish offer months back, and ASLEF now asking their members to endorse it in a referendum. (ASLEF members: ignore them and vote no!)
RMT has at least been prepared to fight. But for most of last year, there was little information from the union and a strategy that relied on waiting patiently (and in vain) for LUL to give in. Many members have been left confused about the issues and desperate for their pay rise. The RMT must name dates for industrial action right away.
We have come too far and done without our pay rise for too long, and there is too much at stake to give in now. We need to get RMT activists out talking to all the members about why they need to strike, and genuinely listening to them and answering their concerns. We need to prioritise those areas where workers are not yet convinced. The union has to make up lost ground with members who are disillusioned with the poor leadership of disputes over the last couple of years, especially amongst station and service control staff. And we need a publicity campaign, including the long-promised leaflet for the public, to take on LUL management’s lies.
The bottom line is this: the more involvement and control rank-and-file members have over our own dispute, the better our chances of winning.
