PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: february 2010 :: RMTnews I was proud to chair RMT’s recent Parliamentary lobby against Network Rail plans to slash 1,500 safety-critical rail jobs. Hundreds of RMT members from Fort William to Brighton descended on London to give MPs the message “Rail Cuts Cost Lives”. Well done to everyone who mobilised for the union’s first lobby of the year – it won’t be the last. No one who was there will forget the rip snorting speech by general secretary Bob Crow, which brought a packed House of Commons Committee Room to its feet in applause. MPs were left in no doubt that trade unionists won’t stand for them turning a blind eye to greedy bosses running down rail maintenance, risking another rail disaster. Candidates at the forthcoming general election should be asked if they oppose these cuts. You can check if your MP is one of the 123 so far to sign House of Commons Early Day Motion 80 ‘NETWORK RAIL AND SAFETY’ from Linda Riordan MP here http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/ EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=39617 . While railworkers face unemployment, Network Rail boss Iain Coucher buys himself a million pound Estate in Scotland, complete with boathouse, jetty, 173 acres of land and a couple of islands. It makes you wonder if you’re dreaming. How can a man with a £4,000 office chair and no discernible talent other than presiding over a ‘culture of fear and bullying’ that led one former Network Rail boss to receive a £500,000 out-of-court settlement after accusing a senior executive of sex and racial discrimination, deserve a mind-boggling pay package of £1.24million? Network Rail members being balloted for industrial action can have their say on Mr Coucher and voting papers are now arriving at members’ homes. This dispute will be our union’s toughest test since rail privatisation in 1994. But a fight for public safety, for workers’ safety, for jobs and for our future is a fight worth having. The fight for safety is also being carried out by the union over the privatisation threat hanging over the Royal Fleet Auxilary and Caledonian MacBrayne. This union will fight tooth and nail to stop the break-up of these essential lifeline services. RMT members employed by Eurostar report that during recent disruption, trains were despatched with no working International Train Radio and staffed with only one Train Manager. These trains are designed to be split in the Channel tunnel to allow them to be driven out from either end in case of fire, such as the serious one that occurred in September 2008. Such a breach of safety procedures is totally unacceptable. Yet an Inter-Governmental Commission on Channel tunnel safety is preparing tunnel rules to meet European Union requirements to open international passenger traffic to competition from January this year. RMT has warned that the pressure from EU competition rules is already leading to safety being watered down. RMT, together with other unions, will be leading a protest for ‘Rail Safety - NOT EU Rail Privatisation’ in Lille, France on Tuesday April 13, 2010 to coincide with the European Transport Workers’ Federation international day of action. If we can take as many to Lille as we did to Westminster, we will certainly make an impact. Finally, I want to encourage RMT members to attend a public meeting sponsored by our London Underground Engineering branch on ‘Organising, Militancy and Revitalisation: The Case of the RMT’ on Thursday, March 4 from 18:00 hrs at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 235 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8EP - nearest tube station Tottenham Court Road. It promises to be an interesting evening for anyone interested in building fighting, democratic trade unions. Solidarity wishes, Alex Gordon President’s column WESTMINSTER TO LILLE Publicly-owned Deutsche Bahn is the successor to the wartime Reichsbahn, which charged its coerced passengers for their journeys to concentration camps including Auschwitz. The call for compensation is being supported by Train of Commemoration, a German organisation dedicated to preserving the memory of the victims of deportations. It estimates that Deutsche Reichsbahn made at least £400 million at today’s value by charging transportees from all over Europe. “Deutsche Reichsbahn was a state-owned logistical system of the Nazi regime so every deportation was carried out by them. This is Deutsche Bahn’s heritage and its obligation,” a spokesman said. DB admits that the systematic murder of Jews, trade unionists, Roma and others would not have been possible without the railway but has so far refused to answer calls for compensation. FINAL AGREEMENT SIGNED IN SEAFRANCE DISPUTE The long running dispute over staffing at French Calais-Dover operator SeaFrance finally concluded following a series of meetings over crewing procedures on the four remaining SeaFrance cross Channel vessels. The main block to a final conclusion was the disagreement by the majority CFDT ratings union with some of the details in the agreement. But the CGT ratings’ union and the CGT-CGC officers’ union committee have negotiated on the details and all four unions last month signed the final document, ending months of conflict. The remaining discussions include the fine points of crewing on the three ferries and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais freighter, recapitalisation of SeaFrance by its mother company, French rail (SNCF) and organisation of the promised jobs and voluntary redundancies for the agreed 482 jobs to go.