Union needs to explain to its members

Most station staff in my Tube station know very little about the upcoming train crew strike. The union’s messaging clearly hasn’t made much headway, and 48 hours before it starts, lots of them are none the wiser about why it’s happening. “Something to do with them having a four-day week? But I don’t see why you’d strike over that”.

In conversation, this isn’t hard to iron out. When I explain that the proposal includes things like changing start times and locations at short notice, nobody is hostile, and most agree that the RMT union is right to strike.

But their information has largely come from the bourgeois press, not the union that most of them are also members of. We’re about to spend a week having to explain to angry customers why they can’t get to work, or go sightseeing in London for the day.

Routinely, our station-staff interactions with drivers themselves are minimal: a few seconds when putting a vulnerable customer on a train, or if they’ve broken down on the platform. This means drivers can hardly explain the strike to us themselves, unless station staff go to their union branch meeting. That’s not always easy with shift work, and most don’t get into the habit. We generally use separate mess rooms.

If our own side isn’t prepping us with reasons for the strike, the other side will be more than happy to step in with stories about greedy drivers always wanting more. Conversations on the gateline are no substitute for properly coordinated solidarity.