18.07.1996

Class solidarity for tube strikes

No big surprises as Labour shuns striking underground workers

Following the successful strikes by Aslef train drivers on London Underground, the Rail Maritime and Transport union, the biggest union on the railways, won a 5:1 ballot in favour of strike action by its train drivers. The news announced in the midst of the threatened BA action was greeted by desperate Tories with talk of banning public sector strikes. The threat had little impact: “It’s just a pipedream,” one union official told us.

Action by the two unions has already been coordinated with strike days planned up to September. This is particularly important, since RMT drivers were being forced to work on holidays and rest days to cover for the striking Aslef drivers. It is also significant, since in the past there has been much rivalry between the two unions and there has been no significant joint action on London Underground since the strikes of 1989.

Tube drivers are in a strong position, as everyone recognises. Between them they can bring the financial heart of Britain to a halt, not to mention seriously inconveniencing our friends in Westminster, whose cavalcade of Mercedes and BMWs will have to battle their way through the city traffic.

The strike has already sent the Labour Party grandees running to the hills. David Blunkett, shadow employment secretary, dealt the crowning hammer blow on the working class on Wednesday. Labour added yet another footnote to its whole sordid anti-working class history, calling on the unions to cancel their official strike action.

Blunkett called on the unions to go into independent arbitration and accept the decision as binding. Peter Skelley of the RMT, and also one of the many Socialist Labour Party members on the executive, said: “You notice that Blunkett didn’t call on the MPs’ pay rise to go to binding arbitration.”

This move by Labour comes as no surprise to striking drivers or the vast mass of working class militants. Their party’s attacks on the working class - from teachers, to the unemployed, single parents, low waged and part-time workers - have reached new heights under Blair’s ‘revolution’, though the foundation stones were obviously laid much earlier. Significant silences have been the only feature of ‘new’ Labour’s reaction to previous strikes. This latest announcement is merely the logical final pillar in Labour’s reconstruction as a safe house for big business.

The suggestion of binding arbitration has outraged rank and file union members and leaders alike. They have been negotiating via the conciliation service, Acas, simply to get London Underground to honour its agreement made two years ago to reduce the working week to 37 hours, with a further reduction in 1997 to 36 hours. London Underground has told the media of a mysterious two-year deal it has apparently offered the unions, but failed to mention in the negotiations which went on late into Tuesday night.

The previous agreement negotiated by a joint working party was always precarious since it was to be contingent on productivity increases. Aslef has even offered to moderate its pay demand in return for compliance with the reduction in the working week. Both unions are emphasising in their press releases that productivity has increased. Indeed the three main directors of London Underground awarded themselves huge bonuses in 1995/6 on the basis of surpassing the productivity targets set by the department of transport. Mr Ford awarded himself £31,544 (20.4% of his salary), Mr Sheppeck £18,862 (20.3%) and Mr Tunniclisse £24,079 (22.3%).

However negotiating workers’ conditions and pay on the basis of increasing their rate of exploitation is a self-defeating policy for all workers. The class needs to go on the offensive and the rail unions are well placed to do so, since over 50% of the RMT executive is in the SLP - formed to put working class interests back on the agenda. Peter Skelley in welcoming the joint action by the unions emphasised the need for solidarity: “You’ve got to have it to win. The miners strike should have taught us that much.”

Unfortunately it seems that the SLP has no plans of its own for coordinating and strengthening the strikes with class-wide action. Peter Skelley pointed out that underground workers were not motivated by party political affiliations and had all sorts of different party loyalties. This is no doubt true, since the vast mass of workers have not yet followed the significant layer of class activists into the SLP. Nevertheless this should not stop the SLP taking a lead in uniting workers in struggle, and raising their sights from the struggle in their own workplace to the political struggle for better conditions throughout society.

Lee-Anne Bates