PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march/april 2024 :: RMTnews We welcomed Thierry Nier, General Secretary of the CGT Railworkers’ Federation from France in February. Thierry met with RMT’s National Executive Committee and left us in no doubt that his members face a crisis caused by rail privatisation and anti-union laws in France. RMT and CGT recommitted our unions to work closely together in future. RMT’s spring conferences are in full swing. First out of the blocks was RMT’s Health & Safety Advisory Conference in York where a record 180 RMT Health & Safety Reps took part from across rail, bus, underground, and maritime sectors. I was pleased to address this Conference and participate in a panel discussion on the Health & Safety at Work Act, on its 50th birthday. RMT’s National Health & Safety conference and Advisory Committee are working to encourage more RMT Women and Young members to stand for election as Health & Safety Reps in their workplaces. There is no better benchmark for measuring equality in our union than RMT workplace representatives who are the real face of our union as far as most workers are concerned. We must and will eliminate barriers that prevent members from wanting to step up for election to represent their fellow workers. The current demographic of RMT workplace reps is an ageing one. This brings valuable experience, but also inevitably means an entire generation of RMT Reps now in their late 50s, will take retirement over the next five years. Something similar occurred 30 years ago as British Rail and London Underground reeled from Tory privatisation and cuts to public transport. In 1992, British Rail gave notice it was withdrawing from the 1956 collective bargaining machinery, which gave strong negotiation and representation rights to reps in Local Departmental Committees and Sectional Councils. This was replaced with company-by- company bargaining to pave the way for rail privatisation. At the same time, London Underground announced a ‘Company Plan’ designed to divide their workforce and bring in new working practices. RMT’s culture of solidarity, purpose and militancy gave a new generation of young reps the confidence to resist waves of attacks on transport workers from bosses of privatised rail, bus, and tube firms back then. We will do the same job today. RMT’s Young Members’ Conference in Wigan and National Women’s Conference in Poole this year both discussed organising new RMT workplace reps. Their success is a measure of how our union will represent and defend transport workers in the next period. I was proud to be able represent RMT alongside National Secretary, Darren Procter, at the Congress of the Maritime Union of Australia in Adelaide last month. Seafarers and waterfront workers were the first to grasp the power of international solidarity. Britain’s trade unions developed due to solidarity from Australian trade unions. The London Docks Strike began on 12 August 1889. By 30 August, 150,000 workers were on strike. They had no funds, but money poured in from Australia. First, £250 from Brisbane Seamen’s and Wharf Labourers’ Unions, followed by £500 from Sydney wharfies. In all, Australian unions contributed £30,000 to strike funds to ensure a victorious outcome to the 5-week strike. This new unionism was a breakthrough moment, organising semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Union membership grew from 750,000 in 1888, to over 2 million by 1899. In 1896, dockers’ leaders Ben Tillett and Tom Mann established the International Transport Workers' Federation. Today’s ITF has launched a Palestinian Union Solidarity Fund, with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions delivering lifesaving essential supplies for our Palestinian siblings in Gaza through international humanitarian organisations. You can donate to the fund here https://www.itfglobal.org/en/ca mpaigns/palestine-union- solidarity-fund Alex Gordon President’s Column SOLIDARITY FOREVER! Palestinians such as “students, human rights organisations and professors“ had been tarnished with the brush of antisemitism for political reasons. “We’ve seen the rhetoric of the government that Palestine demonstrations are hate marches,” he said. Other speakers made comparisons with apartheid South Africa and sanctions placed on them and said that free speech should not be undermined when speaking up for the Palestinians. Further motions were carried on combatting Islamophobia, solidarity with the people of the Chagos Islands and dealing with the sexual harassment of black women in the workplace. Conference called on the union to officially adopt and recognise March 15 as international day to combat islamophobia and work engage with other civil organisations and trade unions to recognise and adopt it as an official day. On the Chagos Islands continuing occupation by Britain, conference agreed that the union should ask RMT’s parliamentary group members to lobby the government and their own party to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and demand that the exiled Chagossians are able to resettle in their homeland. Conference called on the union to campaign for the decolonisation of the Chagos Archipelago and organise a fringe meeting at this year's TUC Black Workers' conference in April in London and invite a speaker from the Chagonissan Voices Organisation. “Finally, this Conference calls on the General Secretary to submit a motion on this matter to the TUC Black Workers' Conference.” Assistant general secretary John Leach praised the conference organisers for a packed-out event with a high number of delegates from across the country. Referring to the recent national strike action on Network Rail and the train operators he added: “We’ve just had the biggest dispute in our union’s history and many of the people involved it was the first time they been really active. “They got involved in a union doing something to fight injustice and using their power as workers to deliver,” he said.