RMT leadership must put action where their platitudes are

TUBE AND TfL union RMT will be holding a demonstration in support of London Underground cleaners fight against privatisation this Wednesday (18 November) as it emerged that senior TfL bosses have received a 50% increase in bonus payments over the past two years from £3.6 million in 2007 to £5.3 million this year.

The tube cleaners, who are also fighting for TfL Chair Boris Johnson’s London Living Wage, will be outside the former Metronet headquarters at Templar House, 81-87 High Holborn at 12 noon on Wednesday 18th November.

RMT is demanding that all tube cleaning services should be brought back in house on decent wages and terms and conditions with the cleaners recognised as an integral part of the London Underground team rather than a soft touch for cuts and exploitation.

In a separate part of RMT’s campaign for Cleaners Justice the union has attacked the private company Advance – who clean train trains for Southern running out of London Bridge and Victoria – for slashing staffing levels in order to prop up their profits. RMT is warning that the cleaning cuts will leave trains dirty on these important London commuter services.

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary said:

“The continued attacks on tube cleaners, and on the staff working for Advance on Southern, show that senior tube and rail managers, and the Mayor himself, are prepared to turn a blind eye while those doing the dirtiest jobs on the lowest pay are kicked from pillar to post. That’s a disgrace.

“Londoners should not tolerate a situation where TfL bosses get a 50% increase in bonuses over the past two years while some of their own cleaners on the tube are denied the Mayor’s London Living Wage and are forced to endure the uncertainty of repeated privatisation.

“RMT’s fight for justice for cleaners on our transport system will continue to put this issue right in front of the Mayor and the senior bosses who have the power to stop this exploitation.”

This is an absolutely crucial fightback by some of the most exploted workers in Britain. Largely immigrant and working at night, the mostly female cleaning teams have to literally run the course of their cleaning routes to make the quotas. The action by the RMT comes after occupations at the School of Oriental and African Studies in support of a victimized migrant cleaner over the summer. The movement to defend and extend union rights and organisation across the often illegal worker dominated cleaning industry is one the official union movement is finally getting behind, with Unite also backing the campaign.

However, the failure of the unions to fight effectively for their members on the low pay grades is clear from the above press release, which makes clear the shocking reality that unions have not even won the London Living Wage for their members yet! This minumum, raised in May by london Mayor Boris Johnson, estblishes £7.60 as the base wage for all Londoners, in theory. The reality is that 47% of part time (heavily biased against women) and 15% of full time workers are still paid below the London minumum (The Guardian,Friday 22nd May, 2009)

The failure to secure a wage that even the viciously anti working class Mayor of London increased, does not bode well for the fight for better pay and conditions for cleaners beyond that still poverty line level. The question could be asked of why no industrial action to force the minum wage for cleaners as a base from which to fight for a standard RMT rate for all jobs? The answer is that Crow, Woodley and co, despite the different degrees of militancy in taking action to defend trade unionists who are considered 'core' union members-permanaent workers in stable and relatively secure jobs-are both united in their commitment to not fighting with the same militancy for those considered a lot of effort-migrants, women, the lower paid who are more transient and less likely to stay in the same workplace and union for a long period of time, i.e. the people who most need militant and fighting trade union oganisations and leaders.

Crow has form for failing to actually fight for the low paid and vulnerable. As Workers Fight stated: "In late 2008 when bus and train company National Express announced 750 job cuts in December and proceeded to outline cuts in its East Coast Mainline and East Anglia train services along with job cuts (on the East Coast Mainline, 18% of the on-train catering workforce, for instance), the union delegates to the company council were able to claim that there would not even be any need for voluntary redundancies at some depots - because in fact the company had been topping up its low staffing levels with agency temps, all along. And it was "only" these agency workers who stood to lose their jobs. Of course these workers are not entitled to any statutory notice period nor redundancy pay unless they have been with the company in unbroken employment for two years, which is not the case.
This, basically, is how many companies are at present getting away with murdering jobs with impunity, while union bureaucrats boast of having prevented compulsory redundancies!(Workers Fight, 'Britain - The social crisis and the union leaders' response', In Class Struggle, #82, Jan-Feb 2009)

What we have is a lot of talk and bluster. We have a campaign. We get zero industrial action! If Crow was to build and argue for strikes across the rail and Bus netowrk to support these demands for the London living wage and better conditions for thousands of workers, then this would be real action, not mere waffling and platitudes. This will not happen without massive pressure on Crow and the RMT leadership. It will also not happen without the creation of a strong communist caucus withn the RMT ranks. Such a caucus would make the case for strike action to defend and extend the pay of cleaners, whilst arguing for a grading system to level up the wages fo all RMT members to the level of the highly paid drivers. This would win the support of the station workers, who have pay grades far below that of the drivers on the underground. The National Shop Stewards Network, although compromised by the patronage of the Crow leadership and the perspective of building it as a cheerleading force for lefty union tops by the dominant force in the newtwork, the Socialist Party, does have space for a real communists to fight for a perspective of communist renewal of the compromised union leadership.

Demonstrations, petitions and lobbying MPs is all well and good so far as it goes. If Bob Crow is serious about winning justice for cleaning workers then strike action across the rail network would surely be a start. An end to the excuse of work being outsourced as a cause of poverty pay must be exposed. RMT train drivers recieve some of the highest wages in the industry despite the outsourcing of their jobs. They do this because their union leadership have made the effort, or been forced to make that effort, on behalf of the heavily unionised sectors of the rail network inherited from the British Rail days. Stop the excuses. Fight for a levelling up of all low paid workers in the rail industry now!