RMT President

I WAS very pleased to attend an RMT conference of women members to discuss ways of increasing the role and participation of female members in the union. The increased number of women employed in our transport industries, is not yet reflected adequately in representative positions within the union at local, regional and national levels. An excellent debate took place from the large number of women who attended. Some felt that childcare problems were the principal reason preventing women from attending branch and regional council meetings. Others felt that male RMT members felt that being a representative was “not a women’s job”, although my impression was that this view is a minority one as the women reps present stated that they didn’t experience discrimination and often acted as advocates for men. Several resolutions were carried at the conference which will go forward to the union executive for consideration. All in all it was an excellent conference. A joint meeting of ASLEF, TSSA and RMT has recently taken place to discuss the improvement in representing our respective members on issues that affect all of us, including travel facilities and pensions, and of course the forthcoming Political Fund ballot that will be carried out later in the year. Working together to maximise union votes in the local elections to prevent the BNP getting a foothold was also discussed. I think there are many issues that we as transport unions could jointly work on and I hope that we can arrange similar meetings regularly in the future, after all, unity is strength. I was also happy to be invited to the biennial conference of our Docks and Shipping Grades. I listened to delegates on the problems of seafarers, including the tonnage tax, the increasing use of foreign ratings at the expense of British jobs and training and other issues that this section of our union is experiencing. Delegations from Iraq and Japanese railway workers have visited the union. Our Iraqi colleagues from the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) gave graphic details of their treatment by US forces who are preventing union meetings at gun point, refusing to return union funds which were frozen at the beginning of the war and preventing the unions from functioning. They stated that the US invaded Iraq to “free the people” but instead there is a US dictatorship in place of a Ba’athist one. They have asked British workers to press Tony Blair to use the influence he claims that he has with Bush to allow free trade unions to begin to operate in their country. Our friends from Japan called in to explain the affects of privatisation of Japanese railways in the late 1980’s where many members of their union KOKURO were blacklisted for fighting against the sell-off. Their president, Mitsuru Sakeda, was returning from lobbying the International Labour Organisation in Geneva to press the Japaneese government to lift the blacklisting as it is in breach of ILO statues on freedom of association, and asked for our support through the International Transport Workers’ Federation. All this illustrates the need for workers of all countries to unite. TONY DONAGHEY RMT PRESIDENT Workers of all countries unite 23 SOLIDARITY: RMT president Tony Donaghey meets a delegation from the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions(IFTU) Send form to Finance Dept RMT, Unity House, 39 Chalton St. London NW1 1JD