UNION WINS INJUNCTION AGAINST INFLAMMATORY WEB MATERIAL

RMTnews :: march 2008 :: www.rmt.org.uk 8 Saturday April 12 11.00am until 3.00pm Unison Offices, Albion Street,Trongate, Glasgow. Speakers include, Phil McGarry RMT Scottish Regional Organiser, Sam McCartney Unison Convenor, Dave Chapple CWU branch secretary and co chair National Shop Stewards Network, Pauline Bradley Unison shop steward. The purpose of this conference is to bring union activists together from across unions, workplaces and regions of Scotland to pool experiences, learn from each others struggles and build the strength of workers resisting attacks by employers. All RMT representatives, lay officials and members welcome to attend this important conference. There is a delegate fee of £ 5.00 per delegate. O ffensive and inflammatory material aimed at RMT general secretary Bob Crow has been removed from a website after a county court granted an injunction against the website operator. The court has extended the temporary injunction it granted in December against a man named as Vincent Flood, as a result of which material has been removed from the internet. The court ordered the defendant to pay the costs incurred by Bob Crow. As well as ordering the removal of the offending material, the injunction restrains the defendant from conduct which amounts to harassment by any further publication of the material, or from passing the material on to third parties. RMT president John Leach said that material on the website was particularly nasty and could only be read as incitement to violence. "When a website carries material that makes reference to taking people out and houses catching fire and allows postings that encourage that, we have gone way beyond the realms of reasonable debate. "Bob has already been on the receiving end of an attack with an iron bar at his own home during his election campaign, and in 2003 his daughter was left terrified after a late-night attack on the east London flat his daughter now occupies. "Bob is not the sort to be intimidated, but publication of material like this is beyond the pale, and today we are sending out the message that we will not hesitate to take action against anyone who crosses that line," John Leach said. T he government’s 30-year rail strategy fails to tackle the structural problems and long-term waste and inefficiency created by privatisation, the leader of Britain’s biggest rail union Bob Crow told MPs recently. Giving evidence to the Transport Select Committee, Bob pointed out that the government had ignored the committee’s 2004 recommendation to create a new public-sector railway agency “given all the powers required to manage the entire rail system”. Renewing the union’s call for the railways to be brought back into public ownership, he said that passengers and rail workers were being made to pay the price of privatisation “The government’s £1 billion cut in funding over the next five years will see passengers paying through the nose with increased fares, while train operators continue to make massive profits. “Ever-higher rail fares and the refusal to develop high-speed rail north of the capital will not help the fight against climate change. “Government plans to introduce 1,300 carriages and new high-speed trains should be a golden opportunity to protect what is left of British train manufacturing, and those trains should be built in Britain. “There is no still industry-wide forum to address issues such as skills, training and staff assaults, or to discuss the report of the Railway Pensions Commission, and Network Rail’s unilateral decision to launch an inferior pension scheme is an attempt to sabotage those discussions,” Bob said. UNION WINS INJUNCTION AGAINST INFLAMMATORY WEB MATERIAL RMT TELLS MPS RAIL STRATEGY FAILS INDUSTRY SCOTTISH CONFERENCE OF THE SHOP STEWARDS NETWORK