AGM REPORT

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: july/august 2011 :: RMTnews 17 NO TO MCNULTY The union called for a powerful alliance of unions and rail passenger groups to oppose Sir Roy McNulty's controversial new report on the future of rail. The government- commissioned study recommends a 30 per cent cut in rail funding to be paid for by: • Pay freezes and longer hours • Inferior conditions for new entrants • Cuts in infrastructure and signal workers • Driver Only Operation • De-staffing of stations and ticket offices • Outsourcing of labour • Attacks on railway pensions • The breakup of Network Rail • The further attack on the freight industry • Reduced safety standards • Increased fares • Greater commercial freedom for the TOCs • Threats to regional and rural lines RMT general secretary Bob Crow warned the government not to implement the report, telling delegates the union would fight every step of the way. He said that the union had already started to campaign against McNulty, producing a briefing to activists and a booklet for all activists and all members to explain McNulty in more depth. "We are going to hound the government and McNulty down in every single town and every single depot. "We are going to put a lot of resources into this he won't know what's hit him. "We are going to stop these attacks on working people and we ask you to join us," he said. Bob acknowledged that the McNulty report had highlighted many problems that the union had consistently raised in recent years, including the expense of franchises, fragmentation and growing public subsidy, which has risen to £4.6 billion annually. But he added: "McNulty doesn't even consider nationalisation whatsoever in his report. "Yet you can take back the franchises and it won't cost you a penny. “All you have to do is wait for the franchise to be over, say thanks very much and take the keys back,” he said. He said that McNulty was a declaration of a war against railway workers. “We have to unite with passenger groups and other unions to defeat it," he said. David Gott, Bassetlaw said that McNulty was “more, pure, undiluted, Thatcherite policies. “We have been here in 1982, with a report that some people may have heard of, the Serpell Report. “Under the Serpell Report, if they’d have had their way, you would have had an East Coast Main Line, a West Coast Main Line, a line going off to Exeter and that would have been your lot. “They might hide it under different names, whether it is a Serpell Report, whether it is a McNulty Report or whatever, the fact is, the railway would never be any good until you put bloody railwaymen in charge of it because we are the only people that have got the knowledge about our industry,” he said. Labour MP and RMT parliamentary convener John McDonnell MP slammed McNulty as a recipe for “further fragmentation of the railway network and cutting jobs”. "We've done a job of exposing McNulty but AGM 2011 FORT WILLIAM Delegates to RMT’s annual general meeting in Fort William resolved to fight the McNulty report, which recommends huge job cuts fragmentation and more privatisation in the rail industry, pledged to defend bus services, pensions, publicly-owned ferry services and to oppose anti-union laws, social dumping caused by EU rules and the victimisation of trade unionists around the world A webcast of RMT’s AGM can be viewed in the members area of the union’s website