London Underground staff voted by a huge majority to fight back over job cuts, pay and management bullying. For strikes, there were 3,165 Yes votes and just 619 No. For action short of strikes, 3,495 voted Yes and only 266 No.
That was nearly 84% for strikes, and a whopping 93% for action short.
But rather than accept this clear message of the workers strength of feeling, management went, typically, gone scurrying to their lawyers having discovered a trivial and irrelevant glitch in RMT's ballot notification. There was nothing wrong with the ballot itself, but a couple of errors in notification of workplace addresses — as though LUL management don't know the addresses of their own premises!
Britain's anti-union laws - which Tony Blair used to boast were the strictest in Western Europe - allow employers to use such pathetic trivialities to get strikes ruled illegal. These laws are there to stop workers fighting back.
The union's Executive decided to re-ballot, without, it has to be said consulting with members beforehand. Union members should have the right to a say in what their union does, not just the 'right' to take orders.
There is a case that instead of re-balloting, RMT should have named dates for action, and when the inevitable legal action came, rank-and-file workers could have walked out anyway. This is a tactical call for any union, which would have to make a assessment about how much support there would be amongst members for defiance of legal threats.
Now the decision is made and RMT is re-balloting we need make sure that management hear our opinions even more loudly this time.
RMT's re-ballot does give the other unions the opportunity to join in. With LUL refusing to budge on its five-year pay cut, TSSA and ASLEF members must demand that their unions act. Finally, RMT must not again allow a cock-up — however trivial and irrelevant — to give management the ammunition they need to take legal action to stop our strikes. This underlines why every aspect of a dispute should be under the control and scrutiny of the rank-and-file workers whose jobs, pay and conditions are at stake.
We also need to be prepared for LUL going once again to the courts; at some point, unofficial action may be our only option.
LUL has already said that it is looking for more anomalies in the union's ballot notification. If management fail to find anything, they may marginally improve their woeful pay offer and try to get our action declared illegal on that basis.
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