Off The Rails Autumn 2007

Rail workers know that our employers will risk life and limb (ours, not theirs!) to keep the trains running and the cash coming in. We can not trust them to protect us at work - we have to rely on ourselves.

In the first century of the railway industry, unsafe conditions killed and injured workers at an alarming rate, and campaigns for higher safety standards drove the growth of railway trade unionism. Today, in the century of Tebay and Hatfield, this fight is as crucial as ever.

EWS is being taken over by the German state owned operator DB. At a recent meeting Transnet (the German rail union) briefed ASLEF on the implications for EWS. As Tosh McDonald (ASLEF vice president) reports, any existing management that doesn’t fit in with how Railion (DB’s railfreight group) run things is quickly shown the door. This has then been followed by workforce cuts and reductions in locations.

A month before the end of the franchise, ASLEF is balloting its members on Central Trains for industrial action.

86.9% of drivers at Midland Mainline have voted for strike action to force the company to enhance pension provision in line with previous pay improvements. ASLEF’s executive has named a series of one day strikes every Thursday for six weeks starting on 25 October.

ASLEF has also called strikes on Silverlink about pensionable pay, after 90.5% of members voted in favour of industrial action. Again, the Society has named six one-day strikes at weekly intervals, this time on Fridays starting on 26th November.

The working class needs a voice in politics. Labour used to go some way to being a workers’ party: it had workers in it, unions could vote on and make policy at Labour conference.

Unions and local Labour Parties have voted to ban themselves from submitting motions on current political issues to Labour Party conference. All the formal powers that conference once held to determine party policy will be transferred to the leadership, which will only have to ‘consult’ with the National Policy Forum, itself a well-controlled and largely impermeable body. These proposals have finished off Labour Party conference as a serious political event. They are an attempt to finally destroy the Labour Party as a democratic political organisation based on the labour movement.

As we write, the Communication Workers’ Union postworkers' dispute looks set to end with a deal that gives Royal Mail virtually everything they want. Only a rebellion from rank-and-file posties can stop this deal, or at least lay the ground to stop further retreats.

Posties knew this was an important and potentially long battle, as they faced off Royal Mail bosses set on giving a below-inflation pay offer while forcing through 'modernisation' plans that meant 40,000 job cuts – that is, one third of Royal Mail staff.

Metronet

Infrastructure consortium Metronet is in administration. Metronet workers held solid strike action, backed by other grades of Tube workers, and forced guarantees.

But the big issue is still the Public-Private Partnership. Workers need not just job guarantees but the reversal of PPP and the reintegration of a public Underground. The unions - in the first place, RMT - need to strike against PPP itself, confronting the anti-union laws that make ‘political’ action illegal.

Ticket Office Carnage