PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: april 2010 :: RMTnews 21 worded strips added to mark each item of machinery and to name each piece of work that is being carried out. As well as being used for when work is being carried out on the track the boards are used for training and briefing staff – particularly contract staff – who may be unfamiliar with a particular location or worksite. They are also used during the design, management and integration of renewal projects and for incident management, recovery and investigation. FROM RECOGNITION TO REDUNDANCY “I designed the possession board system for use in Bristol, but while I was working for Carillion I spread my system to Gloucester and the Wales Marches area. “I was then subcontracted by Network Rail to complete similar work in the Exeter and Reading areas. These now cover the whole of the Great Western Zone,” Nigel says. The boards can take anything from 5-10 days work, depending on how complex the area of track is that is being covered. It took Nigel four years to cover the entire Great Western Zone and ever since then he has been maintaining and amending the diagrams as necessary. As well as being simple to use, a big advantage of the possession board system is how cheap it is to produce. The track is represented by black vinyl tape, while stationery labels are customised to represent trackside equipment. “I work with an easel, in the same way as an artist works,” Nigel says. Nigel’s work has been much commended and he has received numerous awards for it, including a Carillion Values Awards, a Use Your Initiative Award, and one from the National Safety Recognition Scheme. In the face of the redundancy threat, Nigel is unbowed and intends to fight for his job. “My ambition is to expand the possession board system across the network to make it standard for Network Rail,” he says. RMT members are fighting to defend railway safety, jobs and standards against Network Rail’s cavalier attempt at 21 per cent ‘efficiency savings’ demanded by a government- appointed rail regulator, which recently provided safety validation for its own pre-ordered cuts. Now you might think this may be a dangerous conflict of interest, perhaps one worth investigation by a serious newspaper. But The Guardian claims this strike was not “the right way of ensuring that staff grievances are properly addressed”. We know this newspaper share offices with Network Rail, but it now appears to be sharing its editorial line as well. The Guardian editorial (‘Rail strike: sharp end of the law’, Friday 2 April 2010) celebrates Kafkaesque anti- union legislation that led the High Court to grant an injunction against RMT strikes in our continuing safety dispute with Network Rail. It described RMT general secretary Bob Crow as “trigger-happy” and “characteristically belligerent” - a distortion of the truth. It is 16 years since the last national rail strike. These comments says more about downward competitive pressures in the broadsheet newspaper market than about our patience with Network Rail. More seriously, by asserting that “No union that conducts ballots properly according to the reasonable requirements of the law would be in danger of being injuncted”, The Guardian misleads its readers. Were newspapers required to give seven days’ notice of publication of reports into powerful vested interests, or provide judges with a database of their readership by occupation and location to allow the subject of investigation to make arrangements, there would be neither a ‘free press’ nor ‘reasonable’ law. To editorialise that “Bringing the trade unions under the rule of law was one of the great struggles of the 20th century” is a caricature of which any Thatcher-era union basher would approve. Winning democratic rights for workers to join trade unions and withdraw their labour, despite class-ridden, arbitrary and opaque legal systems, is the great struggle waged for over two centuries. Trade unionists in Britain do not enjoy positive rights, but rather limited and shrinking protection from the law, a situation The Guardian seems happy with. Britain’s anti-union legislation, like her libel laws, are scandalous anachronisms that protect the rich and powerful from being accountable to the rest of society. Mrs Justice Sharp’s judgement in Network Rail-v-RMT actually increases the scope of anti-union laws by invoking ‘proportionality’ (a remarkable new development in UK law imported from recent European Court for Justice judgements, allowing judges to assess effects of strike action) since Network Rail emphasised the disruption rail strikes will cause. This will have massive repercussions for public sector workers opposing post-general election spending cuts and is a Trojan horse to outlaw by subterfuge effective strike action to defend key services. The ability of workers to protect their interests and the public interest (particularly with recession and public spending cuts) through joining trade unions to withdraw their labour, remain hallmarks of a democratic society. RMT will continue vigorously to defend your interests in delivering a transportation network safe for workers and the travelling public. President’s column THE GUARDIAN DOESN’T LIKE TRADE UNIONS Alex Gordon