CLASSIFIED/CROSSWORD

strike action has often successfully leveraged significant collective bargaining concessions from employers on pay, rosters, jobs, working practices, pensions, outsourcing, etc. This has strengthened the RMT’s bargaining position and provided material evidence of the union’s power and effectiveness vis-à-vis the employers. It has boosted members’ morale, confidence and sense of collective power generally. In turn, this has encouraged union recruitment and reinvigorated reps and activists which see that the union can ‘deliver’. There have been a number of other important contributory factors to success. First, there has been the role of national leadership, notably Bob Crow, in emphasising the virtues of union militancy and solidarity. Second, there has been the vibrant campaigning work of the Organising Unit in embedding recruitment within RMT and encouraging strong and combative workplace reps organisation. Third, there is the industrial and inclusive all-grades nature of RMT which has provided it with a clear core motivational identity and encouraged a high degree of attachment and loyalty from members. Fourth, there is the highly democratic form of union structure and organisation, which has helped to stimulate devolved membership engagement. Fifth, there is the large milieu of assertive workplace reps and activists which have played a crucial ideological and organisational role in winning support for collective action and building union organisation. Sixth, there is the left-wing political culture inside the union which has also encouraged resistance to employers, neo- liberalism and New Labour, as well as support for alternative independent political projects. Finally, a highly significant contextual factor has been the operational vulnerability of the railway and underground networks to strike action, with RMT’s strategic position providing it with enormous potential bargaining power. However, there have also been some limitations and challenges. First, strikes are necessarily ‘high-risk’ and a successful outcome far from certain – ineffectiveness/failure can weaken union organisation, undermine morale and potentially result in membership loss. Second, there is employers’ counter-mobilisation, including attempts to utilise anti-union legislation to obtain court injunctions to prevent strikes, as well as the use of strike-breaking managers and agency staff. Third, there is the danger of counter-productive targeting of union action (for example, New Year’s Eve on the tube). Fourth, there is the negative impact of repeated suspension/cancellation of strike threats on the confidence of union reps and members. Fifth, there is considerable variation in the level of union organisation/strength between individual companies and different specific grades within companies. Sixth, there is the problem of inter-union rivalries (notably with Aslef) undermining action. Undoubtedly the scale of the current economic recession and employers’ offensive is posing more formidable challenges for union organisation, but some issues for further consideration might include the following: • union strength is not a fixed entity - it inevitably requires constant replenishment • spreading ‘best practice’ to lift the level of union organisation and resistance across the board • strategic and tactical identification of both employer and union vulnerabilities and of how they might be exploited/overcome • development of more co- ordinated and strategically targeted strike mobilisation campaigns (grade/company/sector) to match increasingly more generalised employer attacks • and further attempts to relate the industrial struggle to independent political campaigning to the left of New Labour. Ralph Darlington is Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Salford and spoke recently at a public meeting about RMT organised by LU Fleet branch. RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: march 2010 :: RMTnews 23