SOCIALIST UNITY

by Marcus Mulholland, from 21st century socialism

800 jobs- that is the key issue in the industrial dispute which has started today, between the workers on London Underground (the capital’s metro network, known colloquially as the Tube) and their employer, led by Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson.

The Mayor of London claims that the abolition of these 800 posts can be achieved without resort to compulsory redundancies, and that Underground stations are currently over-staffed. The trade unions point out that cutting staff will reduce safety and levels of service to the public. But, if the workers lose the dispute and the cuts are implemented, there will be a further effect. The number of Londoners who have jobs will be reduced by eight hundred; that is, in a city where unemployment is already 9%, with the jobless rate among those aged 16 to 24 at 21%.

In one of the world’s richest cities, the centre of global finance, over one fifth of young people cannot find work. Boris Johnson has no proposals to create any new jobs to replace those which he is intent on abolishing.

The 800 jobs which are at stake in this strike are a mere drop in the ocean in terms of the present numbers of unemployed, 2.4 million in the UK; and the proposed job cuts on the Tube system are merely among the first in the Tory government’s overall programme of massive reductions in the public sector, which will result in a cut of a further 1.3 million in the number of jobs available in Britain as a whole. But this dispute matters, and not only to those who will be immediately affected by its outcome.

RMT union official Janine Booth, who lives in the London Borough of Hackney, explained eloquently in a small-circulation local newsletter:

Most of us travel around London regularly, and when we travel by Tube, we need staff to help with directions, tickets, service disruptions and emergencies. Yet LU management - and their political masters in the Mayor’s office - plan to cut 800 jobs and cut ticket office opening times by nearly 7,500 hours.

450 ticket-selling jobs could go, plus hundreds of Customer Service Assistants - the station staff who work on the gatelines and platforms, making announcements, giving information, carrying out security checks, assisting drivers, helping disabled passengers and evacuating stations in emergencies.

This will leave passengers to travel with little assistance around a less safe and secure network. The remaining staff will be overworked and vulnerable.

Ms Booth added:

And there will be 800 fewer jobs for unemployed Londoners and school-leavers - including those in Hackney.

The unions also believe that this round of job cuts will be followed by futher cuts in Tube drivers, stations supervisors, service control and other staff.

As is the norm in a Western democracy, such considerations are drowned out by the mass media which argues on behalf of the bosses, and seeks to strengthen their resolve. On Friday 3rd September the London Evening Standard editorialised:

Barring the unexpected, London will be thrown into chaos on Monday by a 24-hour Tube strike. But this is a more important confrontation than other recent ones on the Underground: whatever the disruption, the Mayor and Transport for London must stand firm.

At issue are planned cuts of 800 ticket office and administrative posts, although London Underground has promised there will be no compulsory redundancies. The Oyster system has led to a huge fall in ticket-office sales: some sell fewer than 10 tickets an hour. A re-organisation is inevitable, especially in these cash-strapped times.

There is more than one level of assumption here. The first and most obvious is that the introduction of new technology, in the form of the Oyster card system, makes it possible- without drastically worsening safety and passenger service- to have a massive job cull. This, at the very least, is disputable; ticket offices at some stations are already closed for much of the time, there are frequently long queues at the ticket offices which are open, and the presence of customer care staff is minimal on much of the network.

Why are we working?

Beneath this, the Evening Standard editors, along with the Tube senior management and London Mayor who they are backing, assume that if a job possibly can be cut, it must be cut; or to put it another way, if a means can be found to reduce the number of jobs available and thus increase unemployment, then as a matter of principle that means should be utilised.

That principle is based on a deeper assumption, about why jobs should- or should not- exist.

Why do people work? People labour in order to produce useful things- material objects or services which, under capitalism, are usually traded on the market to create a profit for the employer; or, as in the case of public sector organisations such as London Underground, alongside its essential role for the individual users of the service, to facilitate the profit-making activities of capitalist firms. Without the mundane functions of the Tube system and its modestly paid workers, the flashy and ultra-lucrative financial centres of the City of London would be wiped off the global economic map.

But if you ask yourself, or anybody else, why do you go to work- in other words, what purpose does your job serve, for you? - then you will encounter the role of work, for the worker, and also for the family, friends, neighbours and colleagues of that worker. First and not least, a job allows one to earn an income, by which to support oneself, ones children or other dependants, and, in most cases, to enjoy some minor luxuries. Also in most cases, the job allows the worker to engage with others in the course of purposeful activity, and to aquire self-respect by knowing that they are contributing to wider society. For the majority of people, this is a psychological necessity.

Deprived of jobs, especially decent jobs, individuals and communities fall apart. Yet capitalist ideology insists that the state has no responsibility to ensure that work is available to everybody. This, supposedly, is up to the market- but whatever the market is currently supplying, it is not supplying work for the unemployed and it shows no signs of doing so.

The jobs that the Tube workers are defending are decent jobs. Work on the London Underground means a union-negotiated salary, working conditions, holidays, and pension scheme. If the strikers fail in their objective, not only will an additional 800 people be unemployed, but those eight hundred will be be competing with the rest of the increasingly desperate jobless for posts which already have generally lower pay and benefits than those of Underground staff; thus, by the laws of supply and demand, helping to drive average wages and conditions further down towards the statutory minimums. And, though so far unrevealed, this government may yet have plans to reduce or abolish those statutory minimum levels.

The Evening Standard is correct to note the importance of this dispute. Grimly (or eagerly, in the case of the right-wing radicals) awaiting the announcement on 20th October of the major public sector cuts, we have been since the Tory-Liberal government took office in a hiatus, described aptly by various commentators as the Phoney War. But in Britain’s capital city, the first of the main cuts is arriving early- and so is the beginning of a fightback. As of today, 6th September 2010, the Phoney War is over.

RAIL UNION RMT warned today that new franchise plans, smuggled out by the Government in a barrage of ministerial announcements yesterday, will give train operators “flexibility” to axe services, cut train capacity and frequencies and stop at fewer stations in order to maximise profits. RMT is describing the plan as a “blueprint for a new round of Beeching-style cuts to the UK’s rail services.”

The consultation document unveiled in the Commons yesterday says:

“….further flexibility could be provided so that operators could reduce service frequency or change calling patterns….”

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:

“It is clear that by flexibility the Government mean that train operators will be able to chop back services to suit them and concentrate on profitable routes. This would be nothing less than a blueprint for a new round of Beeching-style savage cuts to rail services

“It is also clear that the franchise holders will be able to alter calling patterns and cut out station stops as they see fit. All told, this consultation document gives the green light to the train operators to ramp up their exploitation of the travelling public on a massive scale.

“What this set of proposals means is longer, gold-plated franchises, ring-fencing the profits of the private sector while passengers pay through the nose to travel on condemned and overcrowded trains on creaking and poorly-maintained tracks. The private train operators, who have ripped off £2 billion in dividends from the railways since privatisation, are being handed a one-way ticket to the bank by the ConDem’s.

“The government are also paving the way for a land grab by the private companies of the valuable assets held by Network Rail and are paving the way for the breakup of the network with dire consequences as they fragment what’s left of the national system.

“Every study has shown that publicly owned railways in Europe deliver the best value money as the profits and shareholder dividends are stripped out of the equation. The ConDems are ignoring that and are giving the private train operators everything they have demanded in order to ratchet up the exploitation of the travelling public and the British taxpayer.”

TRANSPORT UNION RMT announced today that it is launching an unprecedented challenge to the UK’s anti-trade union laws in the European Court of Human Rights.

Papers on behalf of RMT will be lodged with the European Court today by the union and its solicitors. RMT will argue on behalf of its members that its ability to organise industrial action to protect its members is restricted by UK law in a breach of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The union will be represented in the Court by RMT’s standing counsel John Hendy QC and Marcus Pilgerstorfer, instructed by Thompsons Solicitors.

The cases that RMT are challenging at European level are the EDF Energy court challenge and Hydrex dispute. These involved two groups of RMT members who balloted for industrial action last autumn .

The RMT is putting forward arguments about two restrictions imposed by UK legislation in respect of the EDF and Hydrex cases which it says are incompatible with Article 11 of the Euopean Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. They are as follows:

1. the statutory requirement for the union to serve on an employer a notice which must fulfill onerous conditions such as providing the identification of the specific job descriptions of the intended voters; and

2. the absolute prohibition on unions organising solidarity industrial action (even where the secondary employer is closely associated with the primary employer in dispute).

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:

“The shackles that the anti-trade union laws have thrown around workers in this country seeking to take industrial action in defence of jobs and working conditions have got tighter and tighter in the past year and the EDF and Hydrex cases last autumn were pivotal with ramifications for the entire trade union movement.

“RMT is in no doubt that the fundamental human right to withdraw labour has been systematically undermined. This is clearly shown by the EDF and Hydrex cases and we have no option but to take these matters to the European Court in a bid to protect the rights of our members and of working people in Britain.”

TRANSPORT UNION RMT today issued a call for trade unionists and socialists to unite behind John McDonnell’s bid to secure enough nominations to stand in the Labour Party leadership contest and to use his campaign as an opportunity to begin the fightback against the ConDem government’s all-out assault on public services and living standards.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said today:

“John McDonnell leads the RMT group in parliament and no MP has done more to fight against attacks on jobs, public services and workers rights. John is a tireless worker on behalf of trade unionists and the communities that will be there in the front line of the ConDem attack and he is the perfect alternative to the assorted candidates from Continuity New Labour.

“John McDonnell has a reservoir of support that extends way beyond the ranks of the Labour Party membership, it would be an absolute travesty if he was kept out of the race for the leadership and would send out a signal that the Labour Party machine has learnt absolutely nothing.

“On the big issues; defending public services, opposing privatisation, repealing the anti-trade union laws, bringing our troops home and supporting workers rights, John stands shoulder to shoulder with RMT and the trade union and socialist movement. He deserves our full support.”

THE SNP government at Holyrood is set today to be accused by the Scottish TUC of “union bashing as shocking as the dark days of Thatcher” – on the very day that its leader addresses delegates in Dundee.

An emergency motion from RMT, Scotland’s biggest rail union, to be debated later today, congratulates Scotrail staff who have taken six days of strike action and pledges the STUC to support the campaign against the extension of driver-only operation.

The motion (full text below) condemns the use of public money by the SNP government not only to bankroll losses by Scotrail during a dispute provoked by the company, but also to finance a strike-breaking army of scabs.

It also commits the STUC to back the campaign to see workers who were dumped with the collapse of rail contractor Jarvis to be transferred to new contractors on their existing terms and conditions.

“It is a scandal that the SNP government has abused public funds to bankroll a dispute aimed at undermining rail safety,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said in Dundee today.

“Our members have made clear where they stand, and that imposition of driver-only operation on the Airdrie-Bathgate line would be the thin end of the wedge that would see safety-trained guards removed wholseale.

“I am confident that Scottish trade unionists will put themselves squarely behind RMT’s determination to defend rail safety,” Bob Crow said.

RMT emergency motion to STUC on Railway Safety

Congress congratulates RMT conductors , drivers and sleeper-train managers who have taken six days strike action against plans to extend Driver Only Operation on Scottish Passenger Services. Congress pledges its full support for this dispute and states its opposition to extension of Driver Only Operation.

Congress also congratulates Elaine Smith MSP for forcing the Scottish Government to publish, on 17th March 2010, correspondence with First Scotrail which revealed the Scottish Government and Scotrail are negotiating how much tax payer’s money should be used to cover loss revenues for the dispute and pay for scab labour. Congress believes this represents a plan and coordinated level of union-bashing from the SNP government as shocking as the dark days of Thatcher.

Congress notes that the safety of the railway is also being undermined by Network Rail overseeing the sacking of hundreds of maintenance and renewals workers. The cuts are increasing the use of poorly supervised agency staff being forced to travel long distances and work long hours to find work and earn a wage. There are insecurities and low morale which in turn will have an adverse impact on how safety critical work is carried out.

Congress also notes that on 31 March 1200 Jarvis rail workers were sacked after the company went into administration and Network Rail and the UK government failed to back a rescue plan.

Congress further notes that at a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport on 15th April, RMT and TSSA were informed that former Jarvis work will be re- allocated in a “matter of days”. Congress agrees to support the campaign to ensure all former Jarvis employees are transferred under TUPE to the new contractor.

Finally Congress welcomes the STUC’s and numerous MSP’s support for the recent lobby for rail safety and pledges to continue to support this campaign.

by Gregor Gall.

[readers are encouraged to comment over at Guardian CiF, to challenge the anti-union sentiments]

The striking down of the RMT union’s proposed action against Network Rail continues a very worrying trend in industrial relations in Britain. Given the injunction against Unite in the British Airways dispute last December and many other recent examples, it seems the right to hold effective strikes no longer exists.

In Britain there is an ability to strike, subject to the requirements of onerous laws that date from the 1980s Conservative governments and that have been kept in place by New Labour. This is based on properly conducted ballots in trade disputes providing unions with “immunity in tort” – that is, unions cannot be sued by an employer for loss of business incurred as a result of a strike.

If this was not so, no union would hold a strike as they could be bankrupted by employers suing. This “legal privilege” goes all the way back to the Taff Vale judgment of 1901 and the Trades Disputes Act 1906.

But that does not make the ability to strike an effective one. Far from it. In the last five years, of the last 36 injunctions applied for (and nearly all granted) all but seven have concerned public transport (bus, rail, air), the prison service or the Royal Mail, where strikes have an immediate impact on an employer’s operations and revenue.

The law as it currently stands obliges a union to furnish the employer with a huge array of detail about the members being balloted and the members going on strike so that the employer has the time and ability to prepare to counter the impact of the strike. That is the completely unbalanced nature of the law.

Interestingly, no employer is compelled to go through so many hoops when they take their form of industrial action against workers such as closing factories or making mass redundancies.

Equally noteworthy is the fact that there is no legal obligation on the employer to help provide the union with up-to-date data about where workers are working. In the case of the RMT, with thousands of signal boxes (defined as individual workplaces) and workers compelled to move between these when the employer wants, it is always going to be nigh on impossible to approach 100% accuracy.

What this all means is there is a huge incentive for employers to seek injunctions to stop effective strikes and pretty much ignore ineffective or less effective strikes. Indeed, this was highlighted by Network Rail itself. It targeted the signal workers’ ballot and not the maintenance workers’ ballot because the latter would not have created any immediate disruption.

To put it in a nutshell, if you are a strong union, you’ll targeted and if you’re not, you’ll probably be left alone. The sum of this is to keep all unions down under the thumb.

Even if you’re not a union member who believes that workers should have the right and ability to act collectively to defend their interests, many others – including those from the legal profession – have come to the conclusion that the effective right to take effective strike is an inalienable human right.

But if all that fails to stir your conscience and your sense of fairness, just consider the fact that injunctions do not end industrial disputes.

Whether in the case of the RMT or BA, they are lengthened, they fester and they become more embittered because the union will immediately move to re-ballot its members. Therefore, resolving the disputes become even more difficult. For the public, the pain is delayed not done away with.

In this situation, the government, mainstream political parties and the employers shout from the rooftops that the unions should come back to the negotiating table and all these disagreements can be dealt with amicably, sensibly and productively.

This is pie-in-the-sky nonsense. It is the very fact that negotiations have not been amicable or sensible or productive that explains why strikes have been called. No union wants to call a strike, because members lose pay, but they feel they have no other option in order to get their voice heard.

The irony is that if there was an effective positive legal right to take effective strike action, this would be the best way to expedite negotiations and produce fair and balanced settlements. This is because employers would know that they have to engage in genuine give-and-take because they cannot run off to the courts to gain injunctions to stop strikes.

It’s up to the unions and fair-minded voters to put this as high up the political agenda in the forthcoming election as possible. This is the best way attain the industrial peace that so many members of the public are after.

TRAIN DRIVER Alex Gordon has been elected to serve as the President of RMT for the coming three years.

In the postal ballot that closed today Bristol-based Alex, who will take up office in January, beat four other candidates and replaces John Leach, a London Underground worker whose term of office ends at the close of the year.

RMT’s President is the most senior lay official in the union, whose responsibility is to uphold the union’s rulebook and to preside over meetings of the union’s executive bodies, including the sovereign annual general meeting.

“Alex Gordon is a highly respected RMT activist who has served his union at all levels, from the all-important local rep to the union’s executive, and I know he will make an excellent President,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

Following an electoral coalition called NO2EU, built around the RMT rail and transport workers union, contesting the recent Euro-elections there has been some speculation that a similar coalition might take part in the general election.  

It seems that the so-called “core group” involved in taking forward this initiative are slowly moving towards announcing they will indeed fight certain seats. This includes the participation of the RMT, Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Party and Alliance for Green Socialism.

Their next meeting on 5th October will finalise the name they would be standing on, and the agreed policy points. They are also inviting other left groups, broadly supportive of the initiative, to take part.

The 2009 RMT Annual General Meeting also decided to hold a conference on “the crisis in working class political representation”, which will be held at the Camden Centre, London on Saturday 7th November 2009 11am - 3pm. (prior registration necessary via the RMT)

There are a number of aspects of this process which, although the whole thing is well meaning, remain highly problematic.

Firstly, the practicality. The General Election may be as late as May 2010, but it could be at any time before then. To contest the general election with a brand new party, with no name recognition, a very limited budget, and no prior campaigning is at best Quixotic. What is more, in reality the electoral results for No2EU were almost universally dire.

Secondly, this is a very inauspicious election for minor parties. The very real prospect of a Tory government will focus media attention on the two main parties, and squeeze everyone else, except in Wales, Ireland and Scotland where different national dynamics apply. The exception will be those five constituencies where there is a credible and well established alternative candidate from Respect or the Greens where sustained and high profile mass local campaigning has been on-going for the last several months; and perhaps in the two or three seats where the BNP expect to do well. Of course, Dave Nellist in Coventry, and the AGS in Leeds have also been campaigning in particular constituencies for years, but it is hard to see how changing the banner they stand under will help them.

Thirdly, the priority of the mainstream of the labour movement will be exposing just how dangerous a Tory government will be, and seeking to prevent a rout. A great deal of sensitivity is needed in intervening in the election so as not to appear reckless about the danger of a Tory victory. There is no doubt that the CPB understand this very well, but less evidence that the Socialist party have the necessary nuance. So the internal dynamic of the coalition will be an important factor.

Finally, there is a need to be objective about what the RMT bring to the party. They are a successful, but relatively small  trade union. However, they are quite isolated within the wider trade union movement. Their model of militancy has relied upon them having a high density of membership in companies where the impact of strikes is immediate and has political and financial clout on employers. This is not a model of trade unionism that can be readily generalised to other sectors.

And while their independent political campaigning over public ownership has been exemplary, they would not find it easy to build a political alliance with other unions to challenge Labour. There are of course those within the RMT who would like to reaffiliate to the Labour Party.

The NO2EU election campaign involved the active participation and support of very few RMT members, and the decision making was in the hands of even fewer; and while the comrades most closely associated with No2EU within RMT may be admirable in many ways, they are not natural coalition builders, and there was tension within NO2EU, particularly in Scotland.

Any electoral challenge that does come from this quarter is not likely to receive a credible vote, and it must be judged on whether it positions the participants better or worse for taking part in the debate and realignment that the labour movement will require after the general election.

If the results are ubiquitously poor, and especially if they are seen as having a negative impact in Tory/Labour marginals, then  it may diminish the standing of those involved. So I have my doubts about the wisdom of the whole project.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone today launched a furious broadside against Boris Johnson and his tube chiefs for their failure to meet with RMT at an early stage to address the issues at the heart of the tube dispute. This follows today’s message of support for the tube workers from Tony Benn: “London depends on the tube workers and the tube workers are entitled to get support from London.” Yesterday on Radio 2’s afternoon drive time show, BBC radio DJ Chris Evans pointed out that the RMT trade union are perfectly entitled to pursue a pay claim by straike action, though he stressed his view was not political.

Ken Livingstone has also made it clear that the union is right over the key issue of compulsory redundancies; Writing in The Times, and speaking on radio this morning, Livingstone said:

“ ..the 2007 strike was caused by the failure of the administrator to give a guarantee of no redundancies after the collapse of Metronet, the public-private partnership responsible for maintaining and upgrading some lines.

“I met the unions and gave a written guarantee that after the return of Metronet staff to the public sector there would be no redundancies. In an organisation as large as Transport for London (TfL) and with many proposals for expanding services and building new infrastructure we would have had no problems honouring that deal.

“I also left the incoming Mayor £1.5billion in TfL’s reserves to fund this. After the new Mayor’s decision to stop all new infrastructure projects except those that are contractually committed, he is unwilling to stand by the no-redundancy pledge.

“My guarantee of no redundancies merely carried on the commitments given by the Labour Government when it transferred these workers to Metronet. The Mayor cannot be surprised if the unions feel betrayed.

“Instead of opening negotiations last summer, the Mayor made no offer to the unions, with the result that they submitted their pay demand in November. They only received a response from the mayor in February, just over a month before the expiry of this pay round.

“The Mayor has no problem finding time to do his weekly newspaper column, endless photo opportunities and lead an active social life of opening nights, film premieres and society parties. He needs to remember that as Mayor he is the elected executive, as well as being chair of Transport for London. No amount of bluster about no-strike deals or laws is a substitute for doing the day job”.

London is facing a 48 hour Tube strike over jobs and pay 9-11 June, which will cause big disruption to the nation’s capital, inconvenience to commuters, and losses for businesses.

This is therefore the type of thing we would expect the Mayor of London, who is responsible for the London Underground, to be working to avoid. Indeed, in his election campaign, Boris Johnson repeatedly pledged to negotiate a ‘no strike agreement’ with the Tube trade unions.

Yet in an interview with Ken Livingstone on his LBC radio show od Saturday, Bob Crow, general secretary of the largest Tube union, the RMT, revealed that more than a year after the Mayoral election, neither Boris Johnson nor his officials have even made so much as one approach to the Tube unions to discuss his much vaunted ‘no strike agreement’.

In fact the Mayor has not once even met the general secretary of the largest Tube union since his election.

This does not seem the best way to avoid differences getting out of hand disrupting the lives of millions.

Thanks to Progressive London