FIGHT FOR JOBS AND DEFEND OUR INDUSTRY SAY CLERICAL AND SUPERVISORY GRADES

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: april 2011 :: RMTnews 16 The need to fight to defend jobs, living standards, pensions and services was the mobilising message from a determined RMT supervisory and clerical grades’ conference meeting in Bournemouth last month Delegates drew the direct link between attacks on transport staffing and the ConDem government’s onslaught against all workers, public services and the fabric of the welfare state. The conference promised a tooth-and-nail fight against further dangerous fragmentation of the industry through the threatened “vertical integration” of train-operating companies Welcoming delegates to “the cradle of trade unionism”, Dorset Rail branch secretary Pete Brown said that, just as in the days of Tolpuddle, unions were once more under attack, but that RMT members would not “lie down and take it while the government screws up our children’s future”. The private sector had made obscene profits out of Britain’s subsidised transport industry, but now the government was turning not on them but on the staff and working people in general, said conference president Dave Rudland. A plea for unity among transport trade unionists was made by general secretary Bob Crow, who reminded delegates that the principle of a single industrial union was enshrined in RMT’s constitution. FIGHT FOR JOBS AND DEFEND OUR INDUSTRY SAY CLERICAL AND SUPERVISORY GRADES A gathering of RMT clerical and salaried grades was in fighting mood in Bournemouth’s spring sunshine