PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2022 :: RMTnews President’s column Welcome to 2022. A new year, but workers face familiar struggles. It has been 10 years since I wrote the President’s column for RMT News. As your new RMT President, I wish all RMT members and your families a safe, happy and prosperous 2022. How we achieve this, given a public sector pay freeze and unprecedented cost of living increases, is what this column is about. I am truly grateful for the messages of support and encouragement, too numerous to mention, I have received since being elected RMT President. Two weeks ago, I was booking on duty to drive trains on the Great Western mainline. Today, I will be joining RMT general secretary Mick Lynch and other members of our National Executive Committee to take forward the essential business of our union. In case there is any doubt about what that essential business is, let me be clear, it is you - your job, your safety, rights and dignity at work, your pay and conditions, and your pension. I want to place on record my thanks to all RMT representatives, officers and staff for the great work you continue to do protecting and defending RMT members throughout the year. Our union is not a rabble. We are a disciplined, intelligent organisation of transport workers, part of a mass labour movement. We can change the world when we act together in unity. In the past year we have seen why we need to change the world. The crisis of Britain’s capitalist system has been laid bare. You and your family are now paying the price for Tory corruption and incompetence in the form of a two-year pay freeze - a real-terms pay cut. The rate of retail price inflation shot up by 7.1 per cent in the year to November 2021. The price of essential goods and services you need to put food on the table is going up. Your wages are not. The RPI inflation figures due to be released this January are predicted to be even higher, with the Bank of England interest rate increase in December 2021 pushing up rents and mortgages. In the words of Charles Dickens’ Mr Micawber: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and six, result misery.” The cartel of privatised energy companies that control Britain’s rigged energy market have warned of sharp energy price rises this winter and in April 2022 an increase in National Insurance contributions of 1.25 per cent will hit every worker’s pay packet. It is no exaggeration to say that the working class is paying for the failure of capitalism. All RMT members will clearly understand by now, the only way we can bust the pay freeze and deliver real material security is by standing in unity and taking determined action. We need a pay rise. We need free travel for transport workers. We need proper sick pay for all. To win we must build and strengthen our industrial union. As a great American industrial trade unionist, William Z. Foster wrote in 1937: “Unions sign agreements with bosses and carry them out loyally; but behind these agreements a relationship of power always exists. Unions are able to secure concessions from employers in direct ratio to their strength.”1 Happy New Year. Join the union. Alex Gordon BUST THE PAY FREEZE WITH INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM 1. William Z. Foster, ‘A Manual of Industrial Unionism: Organizational Structure and Policies’   www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1937/08/10/manual-industrial-unionism/index.htm had been carried out. The consequences of the runaway were made potentially worse because the leading two wagons fouled the adjacent running line after derailing at the trap points. RAIB found that Network Rail’s risk assessment processes for both new and existing trap points only considered mitigations that were not applicable to uncontrolled runaway vehicles. These assessments also did not consider that runaway vehicles, once derailed, could travel as far as they did in this accident. Recommendations RAIB made four recommendations. The first was that DB Cargo should establish the extent to which vehicles are being left unsecured in its yards and sidings and identify and address the possible reasons for this. The second recommendation was that DB Cargo should review and improve its processes for trains arriving at its yards and sidings so it is clear when tasks should be undertaken, who is responsible for them and how their completion is communicated. The third recommendation was that DB Cargo should review its current arrangements for supervising, monitoring and auditing safety in its yards and sidings. The fourth recommendation called on Network Rail to revise its risk assessment process for trap points, so that it considers the risk of an adjacent running line becoming fouled when uncontrolled vehicles run away. RAIB also identified two learning points. The first reminded drivers and staff carrying out ground staff duties of the importance of securing vehicles prior to detaching locomotives. The second was a reminder that the primary purpose of trap points located on the exit from sidings, or on the exit of a goods line which connect to sidings, was to protect running lines from runaway vehicles.