Tube unions & politics

Tube trade unions and political representation

Michelle Rodgers for RMT National President!

Michelle Rodgers works for Arriva Rail North, where she is a local RMT rep. She sat on the union’s National Executive Committee from 2014-2017, and is the secretary of RMT Manchester South branch. She is standing to be the union’s next national president; Tubeworker is supporting her campaign. We...

Brexit threatens migrants' rights

As the Tory government's shambolic Brexit negotiations continue, there's ongoing uncertainty for migrant workers, both EU and non-EU, about how Britain's immigration laws might be reformed.

We already know that cleaning contractors use immigration controls to undermine workers' organisation; they...

For workers' unity against the far right

Demonstrations on 9 June and 14 July saw the far right out in force, in their greatest numbers since the 1930s. The demonstrations have been organised in support of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka "Tommy Robinson", recently jailed for contempt of court. After the demonstration on 14 July, a group of far...

Two views on the RMT Labour reaffiliation debate

The RMT is currently debating whether to reaffiliate to the Labour Party. The decision will be made at a Special General Meeting in Doncaster on 30 May. In the run-up to this meeting, many branches are holding special meetings to decide their positions and mandate their SGM delegate.

A majority of...

Support your union's political fund!

A part of the Tory government's latest anti-union laws was a change in the way that trade union political funds operate. It used to be that members could opt out of the fund if they didn't wish to contribute, but now you have to opt in.

The reason the Tories made this change, and the reason that...

Housing Is A Right

According to housing charity Shelter, one in every 200 people in the UK is homeless. In London, that figure shoots up to one in 59. We see the evidence of this in and around our stations with increased numbers of rough sleepers and people forced to beg. Several homeless people died during the recent...

1,400 TfL jobs under threat

Transport for London has announced a plan to cut 1,400 jobs as part of its "transformation" programme, a bid to save up to £5 billion as the Tories' slash TfL's central government subsidy. These jobs will come from engineering, admin, managerial, and other departments.

Tubeworker would have no...

100 years since the Russian Revolution: what happened, and why it matters

In October 1917 the working class took power in Russia. Although this is often described as an undemocratic coup, Tubeworker believes that democracy was at the heart of the events that brought the working class to power in 1917. How did they do it?

In 1917 Russia was still an autocracy ruled over...

Solidarity with the Picturehouse cinema workers' strikes!

Workers at the Picturehouse cinema chain, owned by corporate giant Cineworld, have been in dispute for over a year to win living wages, union recognition, and other workplace rights. They're in the Bectu union, now a section of Prospect. Four of their reps at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton have been...

Grenfell Fire: Never Again!

This is a joint blog post from Tubeworker and Off The Rails.


The working-class people killed in the Grenfell Fire were killed because they were working-class. They were killed for being working-class — and, many of them, for being people of colour, and/or from migrant backgrounds — and not being...

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