ORGANISING FOR THE FUTURE, NOW

RMTnews :: september 2006 :: www.rmt.org.uk 10 This last year has seen steady, secure and sizeable progress across an array of areas in terms of organising for RMT. The most obvious measure of this has been the year-on-year increase in membership which now stands at just under 75,000. This was a task made all the more notable by the hits the union took when the Eastleigh engineering works were closed and P&O made significant redundancies. The union has set itself the target of 100,000 members and on present performance is well on the way to getting there within its ‘ten year plan’. ORGANISING At the same time, RMT has also set itself the goal of an organised presence in every workplace where it has members in order to knit together its growing membership. This is the basis of what RMT means by industrial unionism - workplace reps being the foundation of the union in the workplace. Such recruitment, retention and organising of members has been based on an explicit strategy of putting resources into the Organising Unit which then, in turn, are focussed upon deploying the energies and participation of RMT activists and reps to recruit and organise. In this sense, Organising Unit officers are a small cog helping to turn a much bigger cog. Led by national co-ordinator, Alan Pottage, the Organising Unit gives structure and direction to the activists and reps’ work without doing that work for them. This has been done by establishing organising campaigns throughout RMT’s eleven regions and by arranging a series of ‘organising weeks’ throughout the year for each region. Organising Committees within distinctive internal union constituencies have also been set up to allow elected RMT representatives to focus on particular recruitment and retention issues. And every union course now has a strong organising emphasis in it. A key function of the Organising Unit has been to provide the reps and activists with the tools to do their jobs. To this end, the union commissioned four DVDs that show RMT in action in a variety of settings. These are very much campaigning DVDs that help inspire existing, new and potential members by highlighting the campaigning, fighting, democratic and participative nature of the union. Other tools include material to help new reps speak about the virtues of membership at induction weeks for new employees as well as badges, pens, safety jackets and so on to make the union highly visible. Whether the material is company/grade specific or general material, the message is always that workers can solve their problems if they combine together and use their organisational strength. The increase in membership over the last four years has allowed RMT to invest in a state-of-the-art education centre in Doncaster which opens in early September this year. Around twenty reps will pass through it every week and demand is so great that the union has courses planned to cover the next year and a half. Although most of the union’s organising efforts are concentrated on ‘in-fill’ work on ‘brownfield’ sites, it has continued to build a presence in ‘greenfield’ sites and has campaigned for and won new union recognition agreements in the industry. It’s been another good year on the organising front for Britain’s specialist transport union, says Gregor Gall ORGANISING FOR T