ENGINEERS SAY NO TO CUTBACKS

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: may 2009 :: RMTnews 12 T his year’s engineering grades conference was dominated by the central theme of cutbacks and the impact that the drive to slash costs is having on jobs, pay, working conditions and safety. In his opening introduction to conference, RMT general secretary Bob Crow spoke about the union’s campaign over job loss plans across the industry from a finance obsessed management looking to protect their profits at the expense of our members’ livelihoods. Bob piled in on the issue of Home Start – one of the latest management wheezes which would break up workplace identity and collectivism and replace it with little more than travelling salesmen, based in their own front rooms and at the beck and call of management. The general secretary also spoke of the threat of the notorious “zero hour contracts”, the ultimate assault on working conditions that leave workers waiting at the end of a telephone to find out if they have a days work or not: the modern incarnation of the casual dock shifts dramatised in the movie On The Waterfront. A composite motion attacking the way that the harmonisation negotiations have been used as a battering ram in a “race to the bottom” on jobs, pay and working conditions, and setting out a strategy for an industrial and political campaign of resistance, was carried unanimously. Motions on the misuse of Project Rose as a mechanism for cuts in safety and staffing, and on re-affirming the call for a public enquiry into the deaths of four RMT members in the Tebay runaway train tragedy, were also endorsed by the conference. At the close of the conference, President Greg Hewitt said that there had been a systematic attack on pay and a driving down of conditions of employment over the last three to four years from Network Rail. Now under the guise of harmonisation and the current economic downturn, Network Rail are twisting the knife into the loyal employees who have sustained the infrastructure for so many years. “Reports from all over the UK come to the annual grades conferences showing clearly that our workforce is being depleted, areas extended and maintenence cut back on. Our fear is that it may take another Clapham, Greyrigg or Tebay incident to awaken the public’s perception of just what is going on in this industry,” Greg said. “We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the intransigence of Network Rail who’s only goal is to have a totally compliant workforce at its beck n call. We salute our members working for the private contractors who have sent out a clear signal that they will not sit back and take the attack on jobs and conditions. “We have learnt through years of experience that you gain nothing without struggle. We did not win all of our current conditions and pay levels by sitting back, we have fought hard and long and we will not give up our rights easily I can promise you that,” Greg added. ENGINEERS SAY NO TO CUTBACKS Report from engineering grades conference