RMT AGM preview

By an RMT activist

The 2026 Annual General Meeting of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers (RMT) will take place in Liverpool from 21-26 June. The RMT’s AGM is relatively small compared to the equivalent conference in other unions, with around 70 delegates. The AGM is the union’s sovereign body, and the National Executive Committee, which leads the union between AGMs, is effectively dissolved for the duration of the AGM. This means AGM delegates will also deliberate and vote on any matters that arise during the course of the conference, such as calling or suspending strikes, or settlement offers from employers, as well as an agenda of items submitted in advance.

With a referendum of members at Northern Rail over a productivity deal proposed by the bosses, which risks downgrading the role of the guard, due to close on 18 June, the AGM may be called upon to determine the union’s response, including whether to proceed to a ballot for industrial action.

A motion from the East London Rail branch calls for the union to raise demands for pay restoration in pay claims, highlighting the extent to which rail workers’ pay has fallen behind inflation. An amendment, from Piccadilly & District West branch, proposes raising the idea of “inflation-proofed” wage increases, with wages rising automatically in line with inflation. RMT edged towards calling for pay restoration in its 2025 pay claim for Network Rail, which included tables showing the decline in the real-terms value of Network Rail workers’ wages. But when the employer offered only an at-RPI pay increase, the union’s leadership recommended acceptance.

Several motions look ahead to the government’s planned, partial, renationalisation of the passenger railway under Great British Railways (GBR). A motion from Manchester South branch calls for the union to fight industrially to demand insourcing. This is an area where RMT has carried out some important public campaigning, highlighting that renationalisation will be even more limited if work such as cleaning and security remains outsourced under GBR. The Manchester South motion is right to insist that, as well as our political campaigning, the union also finds ways to ballot directly-employed members to take industrial action on the issue.

Other than the admirable insourcing campaign, and despite a 2025 AGM resolution committing the union to a clear set of campaigning priorities, RMT seems to have taken a “wait and see” approach to GBR, rather than campaigning proactively to set out our own vision for a renationalised industry. This year’s AGM is an important opportunity to correct this. A motion from Nottingham All Grades proposes a national set of terms and conditions across GBR. It is vital the union fights on this issue, demanding a single set of levelled-up terms and conditions for all rail workers. Another motion from Manchester South proposes a national rep structure for bargaining under GBR, which East London Rail branch has sought to amend by including a proposal for a limit on consecutive terms, ensuring reps will have to return to the workplace to work under the conditions they have negotiated.

Organisational reviews, covering issues such as the union’s education programme and allocation of officer resources, are also likely to be presented to the AGM once they are ratified by the NEC. If these are presented at the last minute, with branches having had no opportunity to discuss or amend them, this will be an inadequate and undemocratic process.

The RMT Rank & File network, a new grouping of reps and activists formed in early 2025, has produced a bulletin for the conference, and plans to hold a fringe meeting on how to build industrial action over pay and conditions in Train Operating Companies.

At last year’s AGM, some of the most contentious debates were on international questions, including Israel-Palestine and Ukraine. A resolution committing the union to call for the cancellation of all aid, not only military but “financial”, to Ukraine passed on the chair’s casting vote, with the vote amongst delegates tying 27-27, with 10 abstentions. Ukraine is the topic of two motions to be debated this year, one from Edinburgh No. 1, which criticises the 2025 vote without explicitly overturning it or proposing a pro-military-aid policy, and one from East London Rail branch, which focuses on positive solidarity with Ukrainian workers, without referring to last year’s debate. Amendments from Paddington No. 1 branch, which proposed the narrowly-adopted 2025 resolution and some of whose leading activists are prominent in the (Stalinist) Communist Party of Britain, seek to amend references to “Russian attacks” to refer simply to “attacks”, and amend references to “Russia’s war on Ukraine” to “the war in Ukraine” — which presumably just started out of nowhere, with no aggressor.

An emergency motion from the Bakerloo line branch, submitted following a spate of violent attacks on Jewish people and community institutions in London, seeks to deepen RMT's analysis of and opposition to antisemitism. The motion calls antisemitism is "a dangerous form of bigotry, based on claims to identify an imagined form of conspiratorial power associated with Jews", which "misleads and miseducates workers about who our enemies are, and who is to blame for problems in society." The motion argues that "Issues such as inequality and exploitation are caused by the structures of the capitalist system, not by hidden conspiracies."