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RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: may 2017 :: RMTnews
16
The culture of privatisation and
sub-contracting should be
driven out of the rail industry
agreed delegates to this year’s
industrial organising conference
for engineering grades meeting
in Norwich.
Assistant general secretary
Mick Lynch said that across the
rail network, where once there
was central collective bargaining
for standard pay and conditions,
there are now multiple
contractors and agencies that
seek to get as much as possible
for as little in return.
“The break-up of full-time
unionised employment for
infrastructure workers is a
deliberate act to dehumanise the
industry and push wages and
conditions down and profits up.
“For infrastructure workers
this fragmentation has resulted
in vastly differing and often
poor pay and conditions with
little, if any, security of
employment.
“RMT's strength is that it is
an industrial union uniting
workers in all grades and across
all employers, on every
worksite, in every depot,
regardless of employment status,
licenses or competencies.
“That is why we have
produced a charter to get as
better deal for agency and sub-
contracted staff alongside our
existing charter for fleet
maintenance workers,” he said.
He said that there was a huge
potential for membership growth
where the union can get
organised to create a powerful
force at the workplace where it
mattered.
The charter sets out the
unacceptable situation
infrastructure workers find
themselves in and the changes
required. Research has shown
that in companies and
workplaces where the union is
well organised, rates of pay are
higher and terms and conditions
better.
Therefore it is a recruitment
tool to encourage people to join
the union to improve their
conditions at work.
RMT’s aim is to end the
abuse and bring rates of pay
and conditions of service up to
the best in the industry. This
will not happen overnight, but
RMT will challenge each and
every company on the basis of
this charter and the benchmarks
within it.
Mark Hall, Wakefield and
Healey Mills said that Network
Rail Works Delivery was relying
heavily on labour-only sub-
contractors rather than
employing in-house staff.
“This is not only an attempt
to undermine the hard-fought
terms and conditions, but also a
cost-saving exercise whereby
Network Rail can use these
workers as and when they want
offering them no job security
and only to send them home
FIGHTING
CASUALISATION!
Engineering grades launch a
sub-contractors charter and
demands an end to casualisation