RMT battle bus

RMT News – Essential reading for today ’s transport worker RMT is balloting 150 customer-service team members at Waterloo and Ashford terminals for strike action over its “utterly inadequate and simply unacceptable” regrading offer. RMT assistant general secretary Pat Sikorski said that scandalously low pay and unequal rates for people doing identical work lie at the heart of the dispute. “Staff in the customer- and terminal-services teams have long been the poor relations at Eurostar when it comes to pay. “A salary-banding system which is no more than a rip-off has allowed the company to cut the value of salaries over time,” he said. At present, staff at Ashford International are recruited on £13,000 per year – exactly the same as in 1994. Yet under the company’s proposed grading changes, the average increase for staff with more than a year’s service would be just £264. The company also operates different pay rates for people on the same grades, which means that those at Ashford are paid £4,000 less than colleagues at Waterloo doing identical work. But even those on the new higher rate of £20,000 at Waterloo would be on around £4,500 less than comparable grades on London Underground. “What we need is a straight- forward ‘rate-for-the-job’ agreement for every grade that puts a proper value on multifunctional and often multi- lingual skills, and an end to unequal pay,” Pat said. Thanks to a successful recruitment campaign, RMT has managed to bring the company back to the negotiating table, but Eurostar has refused to listen to RMT proposals on pay structures and has failed to address the problem of unequal pay at all. “That leaves us with no option but to ballot our members for industrial action,” Pat said. 5 Eurostar staff balloted for action RMT geared up its organising and recruitment campaign by unveiling its new "battlebus" at the union’s AGM in Portsmouth last month. General secretary Bob Crow said that the bus would assist the union to reach its membership target of 100,000 in the next ten years. As conference delegates inspected the bus at the seafront, national organiser for recruitment and retention Alan Pottage described the new "mobile organising facility". "We'll be using our new battlebus for various campaigns to raise the profile of our union and encourage Britain's transport workers to join us," he said. The bus will become a common sight at Labour movement public and social events and it will be adapted for use as an educational and meeting facility for workers. The ex-London Transport double-decker was driven down to this year's Tolpuddle commem- oration in Dorset by South-West regional official Phil Bialyk. The bus will also feature at this summer's Pride celebration and the general secretary told conference that it may make an appearance at Glastonbury festival next year! Alan outlined the organising and recruitment strategy which has seen membership increase from 57,000 to 71,000 over the past two years. (See page 11). "We're an industrial union for all transport workers and we completely reject any kind of sectionalism or craft snobbery," he said. In 2002, the union set up an organising unit with a specific focus on recruitment and retention and with the aim of training new members to be workplace reps. "Our industrial strength is based on a robust structure of well-trained local reps," Alan added, "so it's not just a numbers game." "We have an energetic organising strategy in every region and every sector and we're training like never before," he said. RMT battle bus hits the campaign trail UNVEILED: General secretary Bob Crow takes the battle bus to Portsmouth ON THE ROAD: The battle bus will travel across Britain