PRESIDENTS COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: june 2016 :: RMTnews 27 President’s column At last year’s Annual General Meeting a resolution from Glasgow Shipping branch was carried unanimously entitled “Save Our Seafarers”. Seafarers are the only group of workers excluded from the full protection of National Minimum wage legislation and Equal Pay legislation. This means even ships travelling entirely within UK waters have crews being paid slave wages, as little as £2.25 an hour and we estimate that at least 8000 seafarers are currently paid below the minimum wage. This super exploitation is taking place despite many of the shipping companies’ responsible being in receipt of over £1.6 billion in tax breaks, funded by the taxpayer. Tonnage Tax concessions allow shipping companies’ to pay corporation tax levied on the tonnage of the vessel rather than on the profits generated and in return there is a mandatory link to provide training for UK seafarers at officer level, the training of UK crew remains only voluntary so it’s no surprise that there is little seen of this. The RMT maritime sub-committee, made up of Lee Davison, Karlson Lingwood, Mikey Craig & Paul Shaw, with the support of the national secretary Steve Todd have been working hard on the campaign called for in the AGM decision. I know the assistant national secretary Mark Carden will do a great job as the Coordinator for this “Save Our Seafarers” Campaign. We can all see what can be achieved just by looking at the amazing success of the “Keep Cal-Mac Public” campaign and I want to congratulate all involved, as the importance of this victory cannot be over stated. The EU in-out vote will be over by the time you read this and I’m sure we will all have heard plenty of rubbish from the “unsavoury brigade” on both sides, so I’m pleased that our union refused to share platforms with any of them and ran a progressive pro-worker and pro-democracy campaign. Indeed I will sign off on the subject with a recent statement from the Beast of Bolsover Dennis Skinner who stated “My opposition from the very beginning has been on the lines that fighting capitalism state by state is hard enough. It’s even harder when you’re fighting it on the basis of eight states, ten states and now twenty eight states”. Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change. Muhammad Ali In Solidarity Sean Hoyle SAVE OUR SEAFARERS passengers rely heavily on help and support from public transport staff, from across the industry. The presence of such staff is often re-assuring to passengers in general but they offer an additional sense of security and support for those with additional needs. Janine Booth, RMT member of the TUC Disabled Workers Conference Committee, was re- elected to serve again, winning the highest number of votes in the process. Chairing the first session of the conference, Janine invited all delegates to join a demonstration by DPAC, Disabled People Against Cuts, that was taking place in London during the conference. This provided delegates with first hand experiences of how disabled groups took direct action and otherwise organised to resist government cuts. The two-day conference highlighted the human costs, as well as the costs to society as a whole, of cuts in services, cuts in benefits and the increasing impact of austerity on some of the most disadvantaged groups in society. Government talk about everyone being a valued member of society was shown to be a complete sham by delegates who spoke of some of the most debilitating and exclusionary impacts of government policies. Disabled passengers and disabled workers have interests in common. Despite the efforts of some politicians and sections of the media to present these groups as in opposition to each other, there is little doubt that defending services, increasing staffing levels and improving customer-focus works to benefit both workers and passengers. Both John McDonnell and Debbie Abrahams, Shadow Minister for the Disabled, spoke passionately of their beliefs that this and the previous government and their austerity measures had done little to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in our society. They re-iterated this by highlighting the immorality of how tax cuts, avoidance and evasion are benefitting the wealthy to the detriment of those in need. L-R Mark (support worker) David Hewitt, Mohammad Mujahid, John Stanford, Carl Day-Crewe, Janine Booth, Ann Mooney, Mark Thomas, Nesar Rafiq