The RMT is planning an extensive political campaign to accompany its industrial battle to stop job cuts and ticket office closures on London Underground.
The University of London Union (ULU), which represents students at a number of London colleges, hosted a public planning meeting for supporters of the “Every Job Matters” campaign on Tuesday 10 December.
The ballot for strikes and action-short-of-strikes closes on January 10, with action due the following week if the ballot returns the expected yes vote.
Workers and passengers face the closure of every ticket office on the London Underground network, as well as the loss of nearly 1,000 jobs.
Union and community activists say that Mayor Boris Johnson and London Underground Ltd.’s profit-obsessed drive to automate as much of the network as possible will hit service quality and passenger safety.
Outsourced workers plan more strikes
Outsourced cleaning, catering, and security workers at the University of London have announced further strikes on 27, 28, and 29 January.
The workers, who are members of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), struck on 27 and 28 November and succeeded in winning significant concessions from university bosses and one of their employers, Balfour Beatty Workplace. BBW employees now have holiday and sick pay terms of near-equivalence to directly-employed staff.
However, union activists remain adamant that their fight will not be won until they have secured full equality with their directly-employed colleagues, and won guarantees that the closure of the Garden Halls (a university accommodation site) will not lead to job losses.
The strike will also demand that BBW and the university recognise and negotiate with the IWGB. Although the November concessions were undoubtedly the result of workers’ action, the deal was negotiated only with Unison, which has hardly any members amongst outsourced staff after they left en masse following bureaucratic sabotage of branch elections.
IWGB University of London branch chair Henry Chango Lopez said: “I can only stress again our (and ACAS’s) bewilderment at BBW’s failure thus far to negotiate with us on any of these issues. I reiterate our willingness to participate fully in meaningful talks to resolve this dispute”.
The IWGB has also issued a statement in solidarity with student activists, whose occupation of Senate House, launched to support the workers’ struggle, was brutally broken up by police.
Rail Gourmet workers' ballot
Workers providing the at-seat trolley service on East Midlands Trains (EMT) will soon be balloting for industrial action over what union activists call “a complete breakdown in industrial relations.”
The workers are employed by Rail Gourmet, a subcontracted catering company, and are members of the Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers union (RMT). A successful union recruitment campaign and support from established reps has put these workers in a position to be able to fight back against a management that makes up the rules as it goes along, and whose treatment of staff often has racist and homophobic undertones. In turn, the example set by these workers has sparked a separate aggregate national ballot of all Rail Gourmet employees.
At the last count, the EMT Rail Gourmet workers’ campaign included 68 demands ranging from reinstatement of a dismissed colleague to a fairer system of filling vacancies. Talks with management have been unproductive, so it will be important that the industrial action ballot is not called off if management appear to offer concessions; keeping the ballot live means workers can negotiate from a position of strength.
Action should go ahead unless workers achieve several real concessions from management.
More fire strikes
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has called new strikes in England and Wales on 13 and 14 December, both from 6 pm to 10 pm.
These are the fifth and sixth strikes since the end of September.
The strikes were announced along with the result of its ballot for action short of a strike on pensions. FBU members across the UK voted almost nine to one for this type of industrial action.
The ballot, along with further strikes dates, shows that firefighters have the will and the spirit to carry on fighting. In contrast to many unions, where action takes place for a day but then is followed by a long break, the FBU has kept up the pressure on government.
Over the last month there has been little movement by government, with the FBU planning for a longer dispute. There is huge bitterness among firefighters as the government announced plans for further contribution rises in April 2014. For the majority of firefighters, this will mean paying 14.2%, one of the highest in the public sector. Other public sector workers in education, the civil service and the health service will also pay more from April.
The government says firefighters pensions are “generous”, but firefighters taking home £1,650 a month and paying £340 a month into the pension scheme face a retirement pension of £9,000 a year if they are unable to meet the physical demands of the job after age 55 — even if they have been paying into the fund for 35 years.
