Was RMT right to suspend the TubeLines strike?

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

RMT has suspended its strike action after TubeLines made the following two-year offer:

Year 1:

  • 4.99% pay rise, backdated to 1st April 2008.
  • Apprentices and other grades on less than £20,000 to receive £1,000 pay rise backdated to 1 April 2008.
  • Points Technicians to receive 4.99% plus a further rise of £3,000, backdated to 1st April 2008.
    Year 2:
  • Pay rise of RPI (February 2009 figure) + 0.85%.
  • Apprentices and other grades on less than £21,000 to receive RPI + 0.85% or £1,000 rise, whichever is the greater.

In addition, travel subsidy will rise from 80% to 90%, but there is no movement on pensions. The other issues in the claim - harmonisation of rest days for Ultrasonics and PMs, tampers and L&E site inspectors grading and pay, Christmas working, Q Grade Restructuring - are not covered by the offer and will be negotiated separately.

On the face of it, this looks OK - above inflation, with higher rises for lower-paid grades. But in the current economic climate, with inflation and bills soaring, fighting for strong above-inflation pay rises is crucial. And this offer is just not robust enough.

Currently, RPI stands at 5%, so 4.99% is not above inflation after all. And in any case, the RPI figure systematically under-estimates the real inflation of workers' spending. For next year, the pay rise is based on the RPI figure for the February before it comes in, so it only takes a relatively small rise in inflation duing the 14 months after that for the pay rise to be wiped out and even turned into a pay cut. 0.85% is not a big enough buffer against rising inflation.

By calling off the action, the union has missed the chance to see whether it could win more by striking. Last autumn, there was intense pressure on the unions to call off the Metronet strikes as the company's offer gradually improved. But while the others dropped out, RMT stood firm, and guess what? The 'final offer' suddenly wasn't final at all - when the strike started, it improved again.

TubeLines workers were in a position of strength - crucial to the running of the railway, able to take action that has a big impact. Other grades had put in a lot of preparation for solidarity and safety action (despite ASLEF's pathetic parroting of management's line that it's safe to drive trains without the ERU): we were ready and could have had them. But we do need to make an honest assessment of the commitment of workers to the strike and the strength of union organisation in the workplace before forming a definite view on whether the strike should have gone ahead.

TubeLines workers had voted for strikes, so the presumption should have been that strikes go ahead unless a really good offer comes in. Instead, it comes across that from the moment of a yes result, union leaders look for an offer just good enough to call off the fight.

At the members' meeting on Monday, Bob Crow made much of arguments for 'democracy', that the members will decide through a referendum. This is an improvement on the situation with the casualisation dispute and the last LUL pay deal, where there was no referendum. But is this disingenuous democracy? The members' meeting was not asked its view on whether to suspend the TubeLines action: the union Executive had already taken the decision. And although members can vote 'No' in a referendum and put the strikes back on, they are very unlikely to do so when their union's leadership is showing that it does not want a fight.

Had the union fought on, it would have given a lead to the rest of us too - LUL workers going into our pay claim, other public sector workers continuing their fight against pay cuts.

Although neither side seems able to put this in writing, it is widely rumoured that TubeLines agreed to help sort out the cleaners' pay rise if RMT called off the TubeLines strike. On one level, it's pretty galling to see the demands of another group of workers used to demobilise the TubeLines dispute. How can the bosses use the demands of other workers to suspend a dispute, where we cannot use the demands of other workers to call our disputes?! (Answer: the anti-union laws!)

But on another level, like it or not, the TubeLines dispute was the industrial strength behind the cleaners' negotiations. Cleaners were not relying on TubeLines - they had fought their own fight - but RMT was right to co-ordinate the strikes on the same days, recognising the force that would put behind the cleaners. This strategy vindicated RMT's all-grades unionism, and brought ISS to negotiations this week.

But after RMT suspended the TubeLines action, the offer to cleaners became pretty fixed at not much more than the 60p pay rise and increments til April. We lost our bargaining power. If the union calls a co-ordinated strike, it should have co-ordinated negotiating, a strategy that works together. In truth, the offer to cleaners on TubeLines did improve slightly after the suspension, but since then, there have been signs of backtracking.

Check back to this blog later for more information and comment about the cleaners. In the meantime, comments are welcome about the TubeLines offer and the union's suspension of strike action.

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