AGM 2021 - A FIGHTING UNION

15 AGM2021 A FIGHTING UNION Annual General Meeting calls for unity in the face of attacks on jobs and pay A rallying call to prepare for action was issued at RMT’s 2021 annual meeting in Leeds as “storm clouds” gather and threatening the jobs and pay of hundreds of thousands of workers. With employers determined to attack workers in pursuit of ever more profits and a government intent on making working people foot the multi- billion-pound bill for the coronavirus pandemic, the message to RMT members was to mobilise for resistance. The union returned to its roots for its 150th annual meeting to Leeds, where what was then the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) was formed at a meeting in the city in 1871. The Victorian building where the meeting took place is long gone. But it was clear at this year’s AGM that the struggles facing the ASRS then were little different from those facing the union today. In 1871 the founders faced profit-driven private operators, anti-union employers, needless deaths and serious injuries involving rail workers, poor wages and working conditions, the need for financial security in old age and the challenge of recruiting thousands of non- union workers, the Leeds AGM was told. What has changed? Many advances had been made by workers in the 150 years which have passed since then, but the same challenges remain. Just as those early trade unionists prepared for battle, delegates at this year’s AGM did the same with decisions to fight, if necessary, with industrial action not only to defend what has since been achieved, but also to make new gains. In a passionate speech RMT general secretary Mick Lynch praised the resilience of the union’s activists over the last two years in the face not only of attacks from profit-driven private operators backed to the hilt by the Tory government, but also the tragedy of the Covid pandemic, which claimed more than 30 bus drivers’ lives in London alone. Despite the difficulties RMT membership has grown from 81,000 to 83,000 since January 2020, he reported. “We have been able to sustain and build our membership levels in the most difficult of conditions. “That is a great achievement. And that reflects the work of our rank-and-file activists in the workplace who are the real, everyday face, voice and profile of this union,” he said. Nor had the pandemic prevented RMT members from taking the fight to the employers through industrial action on the issues of real importance in the workplace – jobs, pay, conditions, pensions and safety – and more are to come. “The vast majority of our members have been subject to a pay freeze for the last two years.