RMT | ukwatch.net

Financial chaos coming on London tube

Alex Doherty — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:19:13 +0000

The nearly £2 billion gap between Tube Lines’ £7.2 billion costs estimate and the maximum £5.5 billion the PPP arbiter says it should get raises fears for planned Tube upgrades.

The Tube Lines estimate is a massive £3.1 billion higher – £2.5 billion taking inflation into account – than that of London Underground, which called for the arbiter’s early guidance.

“Metronet’s collapse was so spectacular that it made Tube Lines look good in comparison, but RMT has maintained from the start that the PPP itself is the complex, wasteful problem,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

“After Metronet’s collapse left the public with a £2 billion extra bill, the alarm bells should be ringing and it is important to understand that 95 % of Tube Lines’ colossal liabilities are also underwritten by the public purse.”

Subsidy for the Tube has increased 20-fold as a result of the PPP, and Tube Lines has been taking more than £1 million a week in profits for its shareholders. Now they are asking for £2 billion more than the arbiter thinks their costs should be. They’re picking our pockets!

“The PPP, like all PFI projects, is a complex scam designed to convert public money into private profit, and these contracts should be brought in-house now,” Bob Crow continued.

Meanwhile chaos looms in preparation for the London Olympics

We are now less than four years away from the 2012 Olympics, and if we are to get the Tube network the capital needs in place by then, the time to sort out this mess is now.

There is no agreement with London Underground staff to run the network round the clock during the 2012 Olympics, the Tube’s biggest union said today.

Following the mayor’s public announcement that the network would operate 24 hours a day during the 2012 games, RMT reveals that it has yet to be approached by the mayor, Transport for London or London Underground Ltd management for discussions on the many complex issues involved.

“It is all very well the mayor announcing that the Tube will run-around the clock during the Olympics, but if it is going to happen it will need detailed planning and the agreement and goodwill of the professional staff who will deliver it,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said.

“RMT supports the 2012 Olympics and for two years we have been seeking an early settlement that takes account of the substantial additional burdens and responsibilities that London’s transport workers will have placed upon them.

“We are not opposed to 24-hour running during the games in principle, but simply announcing it will not make it happen, and so far there has not been a word from the new mayor seeking even preliminary talks.”

Mayor Boris is clearly out of his depth in all this. Here’s more evidence.

Passengers to pay

Inflation-busting fare increases are a short-sighted fix that will create more problems than they solve, London Underground’s biggest union says today.

As the mayor of London announced increases at one per cent ahead of inflation, RMT called for an end to the colossal waste of public money still being poured into private pockets under the part-privatisation of the Tube’s infrastructure

“If the mayor needs extra cash for the London transport network he should be looking at ways to end the shocking waste still caused by the PPP, not squeezing passengers even more with inflation-busting fares hikes,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

“The economy and the environment need a massive increase in affordable transport capacity, and that applies to London as much as the rest of Britain,” Bob Crow said.

This article first appeared in Socialist Appeal.

Union leaders v workers on the London Underground?

Alex Doherty — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:47:07 +0000

Leaders of the Rail, Maritime and Transport trade union (RMT) are seeking to stifle the growing militancy on the London Underground rail system and prevent the development of a political opposition to the Labour government.

On August 19, the RMT Executive suspended a 72-hour strike by 1,000 engineers and maintenance workers at private infrastructure company Tube Lines after accepting a wage deal of 4.99 percent backdated to April this year and the promise of a rise next year equal to inflation.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said, “RMT members at Tube Lines are to be congratulated for the unity and commitment they have displayed during this dispute, not least in the face of hostile media coverage.” He admitted the union had had difficulty selling the deal.

The following day, on August 20, the executive called off a threatened 48-hour strike by 700 cleaners working for subcontractors ISS, ICS, Initial and GBM.

The cleaners had voted by 99.2 percent for industrial action and already held several strikes in an effort to force new Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson to honour the pledge made by former Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone to pay them the “London living wage” of £7.45 an hour. Livingstone had used this promise to defuse anger after the collapse last year of the Metronet public private partnership (PPP) with debts of £2 billion. In return, the RMT suspended strike action and campaigned for Metronet to be taken over by state-run Transport for London (TfL) permanently rather than sold off—the Labour government’s favoured option.

In the event, Johnson backed down, claiming it was a “trivial dispute,” but made it clear his aim is to get a no-strike regime imposed on London’s transport system as a prelude to further attacks on wages and conditions. The agreement meant cleaners working on Metronet lines received a rise from £5.50 to £7.45 an hour from September 1, 2008. Workers on Tube Lines will have to wait until April 1, 2009, to receive the full amount.

Crow declared, “This is a massive breakthrough which will see all Tube cleaners paid the London living wage by next April at the latest.”

The Tube workers withstood massive intimidation from management, the government and the media to break through the government’s 2 percent wage limit for the public sector. However, to claim that these pay awards represent a “massive breakthrough” is a distortion.

The cleaners’ new wage rates are no more now than cleaners on the Underground earned before privatisation. Their demands for 28 days’ holiday, sick pay, pension rights, travel concessions and the end of what is called “third party sackings” in which they can be sacked without redress to disciplinary hearings or independent appeals remain unresolved.

Since the agreement was made, the cleaning companies, which previously turned a blind eye to the employment of undocumented workers, have suddenly introduced national insurance checks. At least three workers have been detained and two deported.

In addition, the industrial action was called off just as rail workers at the Charing Cross group of stations, East Ham group and Rickmansworth group were taking action. Bill posters working at CBS Outdoor and Eurostar cleaners had voted unanimously to strike. Other public sector workers are also threatening industrial action.

For all the RMT’s denunciations of conditions on the London Underground and criticisms of privatisation, they never address the fact that the trade unions were directly responsible for allowing privatisation to happen in the first place.

Since Labour’s election, it has faithfully served its capitalist masters, tearing up welfare entitlement, privatising key sectors of public services, and overturning democratic rights. No demand has been too great.

The PPP programme was the method by which they championed the privatisation of the London Underground. Claiming the market and corporate efficiency was the optimum way of financing after years of underfunding, proposals for farming out the track, tunnels and signalling to the private sector via the PPP were announced in 2001.

Crow’s election as general secretary of the RMT that year was an expression of how New Labour had alienated large sections of workers. Crow, a former member of the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain, was one of a new layer of officials dubbed the “awkward squad” by the media. Such victories were hailed by left groups such as the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party as the start of a revival of militant trade unionism that would challenge the government.

Rail workers voted three times for strike action against the PPP proposals, but the RMT repeatedly called-off strikes at the last minute and overturned ballots for action. While workers saw strike action as a means of opposing privatisation, the unions refused to make this their explicit aim. Where one-day strikes did happen, they were the result of unofficial action.

As a result, two new companies, Metronet and Tube Lines, were set up in 2003 to run the maintenance and cleaning operations, many of which were further outsourced.

Crow and the other union bureaucrats hoped to convince the government that it had to make some concessions if it was to avoid class confrontation and retain political credibility. At first, the RMT sought to put pressure on the Labour leaders by withholding union funds. Crow was adamant that “for the trade union movement to abandon the Labour Party would be a serious mistake.” But within the RMT, only a few hundred of its 70,000 members remained members of the party.

At the RMT’s Annual General Meeting in 2003, a vote was passed allowing branches to affiliate to and provide finance for other political organisations of their choosing. Soon after, the Scottish Regional Council applied to the RMT executive for affiliation to the Scottish Socialist Party.

The SSP was the result of the regroupment strategy pursued by the Socialist Party and its predecessor, the Militant Tendency, which claimed that the formation of a new socialist party would arise through a realignment of left elements within the Labour Party, the various fragments of the old Stalinist Communist Party and the smaller left groups. Such parties would be based on a reformist programme, with Marxists operating as a tendency within them much as Militant had operated within the old Labour Party. At first orienting to the defunct Socialist Labour Party set up by British miners’ union leader Arthur Scargill and Rifundazione Comunista in Italy, which emerged out of a split in the Italian Communist Party, the SP then set up the Socialist Alliance, which Crow joined.

The project failed and was subsequently abandoned in England. In Scotland, it enjoyed a longer duration thanks to its explicit embrace of Scottish nationalism and support for the newly devolved capitalist parliament. Later, it too fell apart amidst a bitter split.

In the meantime, the RMT’s flirtation with the SSP led Labour’s national executive to expel the union, claiming it had broken the party’s constitution.

Crow continues to campaign to a more viable political vehicle to help bolster the dwindling political authority of the trade union bureaucracy and the Labour “left,” such as it is. At the second conference of the SP-led Campaign for a New Workers Party, on June 29, he declared, “What our members don’t want to see is another Respect or Socialist Labour Party. They want to see a political party—and we’ve got to move towards it.”

Crow’s proposed alternative for his union has proven to offer no progressive way forward for working people. The era of global production, facilitated by developments in computerisation and telecommunications, has destroyed the basis for such national reformist strategies. No longer able to reconcile its policy of social reforms with its defence of capitalism, Labour has transformed itself into the direct political instrument for imposing the dictates of global capital. The same process has taken place within the trade unions, which have overseen greater exploitation, longer working hours and lower wages.

What is required is the establishment of rank-and-file committees to take the struggle out of the hands of the RMT, coordinate joint action across the London Underground and appeal for support from the millions of workers and commuters whose safety is compromised on a daily basis by the drive to ratchet up exploitation and cut costs. Such an industrial offensive can only succeed if it is linked to a new political strategy, which rejects the capitalist market as the basis for the organisation of economic and social life and places social need over corporate profit.

Keep Tyne and Wear Metro Public, says RMT

tim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:17:12 +0000

The Tyne and Wear Metro is a public-sector success story and should be kept that way, delegates at the annual conference of Britain’s biggest rail union insisted today.

As RMT’s AGM called on the government to implement Labour policy on public ownership, RMT general secretary Bob Crow and Northern TUC secretary Kevin Rowan issued a joint plea for an end to the threat to fragment and privatise the northeast’s Metro network.

Letters sent today to Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly and Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive (Nexus) director-general Bernard Garner point out that the Metro is already achieving record levels of punctuality and ridership.

The letters express the concern that funding for a welcome upgrade of the network has been made conditional on splitting up and privatising the Metro’s operations and infrastructure.

Nexus bulletins indicate that the government has insisted on the break-up, overruling the PTE’s preferred option of maintaining Metro as a ‘vertically integrated’ railway.

“The model now being proposed for the Metro is in danger of repeating the mistakes of railway privatisation,” Bob Crow and Kevin Rowan say.

“Safety will be threatened as the Metro will be fragmented into different sectors, meaning less effective control and private companies cutting corners to save money.

“Fragmentation will lead to a less efficient, more expensive railway which is why Nexus were originally opposed to the break up of the Metro and why we remain opposed to it.

“Large amounts of fare revenue and public subsidy will be used to pay dividends to shareholders instead of being used to improve the Metro for the benefit of passengers and the wider community in the North East.

“And of course Metro workers’ pensions, jobs and conditions will be under threat as the private sector tries to maximise profits at the expense of Metro workers,” the letters say.

Actions do not match

tim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:55:15 +0000

Those behind the demand for a third runway and a sixth terminal stress the jobs that would be created, but what really motivates them is the profits that they foresee.

That might be bearable but for the severe effects that the development will have on the environment and on the lives of the people living in the region of the airport.

Pressing ahead with expansion puts the government in a difficult position, given its frequent verbal commitments to combating climate change.

Unfortunately, its actions do not match what it says.

The government claims that the planned development meets noise and air quality targets, but it discounts the reality that the entire village of Sipson, with about 700 homes, would be utterly destroyed.

Nor will that be the end of the matter.

An expanded Heathrow, with a new runway and increased passenger numbers, will put greater strain on the already existing M4 and M25 motorways that serve the airport.

It is inevitable that the roads lobby will already be preparing the case to expand these motorways or to create another, leading to the further concreting over of another part of the overcrowded south-east of England.

The government ought to reject the short-sighted short-termism of the motorway and airline lobbies.

It should expand and modernise the environmentally friendly railways, with exclusive high-speed tracks to obviate the need for short-haul flights and take a conscious decision to drive down rail prices to encourage passengers to switch their means of travel.

Tube chaos

Tory Mayor Boris Johnson owes an apology to all London Underground staff who suffered physical and verbal assault at the weekend.

He should also apologise to all citizens in the capital for the chaos to which their Tube system was reduced by a minority of anti-social elements who took advantage of the mayor’s political stunt.

What happened on Saturday night should not have surprised anyone.

It was the logical result of too much drink taken in the midst of crowds too big to control by Tube staff and police.

Rail union RMT leader Bob Crow had already pointed out the impossible task handed to staff of carrying out the mayor’s unthought-through plan to ban alcohol on public transport.

The main problem for staff is not someone who opens up a can of beer or who sips from a hip flask on a Tube.

Problems arise when people roll into stations already steaming, after hours spent in pubs or City clubs, and look to have a go at staff carrying out their duties.

The mayor’s “Look how tough I am on yobs” gimmick is useless in tackling the anti-social behaviour witnessed on Saturday night and the similar misconduct that public transport staff suffer every other night of the year.

Instead of blurting out the first thing that comes into his head, he, like government ministers, would be far better served listening to the people who are at the sharp end of this problem.