CROSSWORD/LETTERS

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: may 2011 :: RMTnews 33 The winner of prize crossword no. 68 is L Conway of Ramsgate. Send entries to Prize Crossword, RMT, Unity House, 39 Chalton Street, London NWI IJD by June 14 with your name and address. Winner and solution in next issue. ACROSS 7 Power store; gun emplacement (7) 8 Ties up (7) 10 Where flour becomes bread and cakes (6) 11 Tries (8) 12 Payment for transport (4) 13 Fought over; opposite of walkover (9) 14 What the government should do to transport (11) 19 Remains beyond one’s welcome (9) 21 South African currency (4) 23 Of an important moment in time (8) 24 Pieces of music for nine players (6) 25 Cooking instructions (7) 26 Three-dimensional representations (7) DOWN 1 Mad fruit? (7) 2 And so on, in Latin (8) 3, 5 Victimised Tube driver (5, 6) 4 Non-drinking (8) 5 See 3 (6) 6 Male union member (7) 9 Victimised Tube driver (6,5) 15 Buried (8) 16 22 is this, as the slogan goes (8) 17 Kept away from (7) 18 One more? (7) 20 Keep, or hold back (6) 22 State of one-ness - gives trade unions 16 (5) £25 PRIZE CROSSWORD No. 70. Set by Elk No. 69 solution... PRODUCTIVITY V JOB SECURITY Dear editor, In the Ragged Trousered Philannthropists Robert Tressell described the The Great Money Trick thus: “Those who control the means of production will always control the price and profit margins of commodities produced, to the point that the commodities workers produce cannot be afforded by the workers who produce them”. There is, however, another money trick: one of productivity verses job security. Why pay two employees £100 a week each when, via productivity, you can get one employee to do both jobs for £150? The company gets greater profit and a lower pay bill, and one worker gets an extra £50 a week – but the sacked worker gets nothing. In a valiant attempt to reach harmonised pay rates and T&Cs, RMT recently entered into an agreement with Network Rail over changes in working practices, and added to that was an incentive scheme. They came in two separate parts, the first for the acceptance of the change in working practices, for which we received a taxable, one-off lump sum of £2,000 and a one per cent increase in basic pay. The next two steps depended on increases in productivity of five per cent which would add one per cent on to our basic rate of pay over a set period of time. How can we have a policy of ‘no compulsory redundancies’ yet agree to a productivity deal? It is hypocritical and to be frank, if we accept it, downright shameful. The productivity deal will only legitimise job cuts, allowing NR to claim that its cuts figures were right. It will also lower the pay bill, so for NR it’s win-win. But it will probably sound the death knell for employees who are displaced and waiting for January 2012. If we continue to increase productivity, it can only threaten what is left of the workforce. It is true that the members accepted the £2,000 and the one per cent increase, but that was just to accept the change in working practices: the further one per cent is for increases in productivity, and then if only if we hit the five per cent target. We need to make a clear distinction between what constitutes an agreement and what is an attempt to reach a productivity goal, because they are different things. The five per cent target is set by NR: it is not an agreement that we will reach the five per cent but an understanding that if we reach the five per cent increase in productivity, the one per cent rise will be triggered. NR has not said what will happen if we don’t reach the goal, or if we reach six or seven per cent – and we will not know because guess who does the calculations? We must therefore look very carefully between how much productivity we can achieve and at what point it drives down employment. Do not be mistaken in thinking we have agreed a watertight deal, or that we need to re-ballot members because I don’t believe we do. The ballot was for accepting the change in working practices and the company will not want to go back on that. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that jobs are safe, as the greater the increase in productivity the greater the chance of job losses. We should all think twice before we see the pound signs: are they the bait leading us to the scrapheap? Greg Hewitt, Brighton letters