Unions should resist rail and fuel price rises with civil disobedience

Millions of people who commute to work are a just a few weeks away from a massive cut in incomes that will intensify the dramatic fall in living standards that the recession and austerity measures have already created.

As people struggle back to work after the Christmas holidays, they will be hit by a double whammy of steep rail fare increases and the bills for electricity and gas that in some cases will show rises of nearly 11%.

This amounts to a huge transfer of wealth to the train operators and energy companies like E.On which yesterday announced increases averaging 8.7%. These will naturally impact harder on poorer households, adding to five million already in fuel poverty.

So too will the rail fare rises. Passengers on many routes face fare increases of up to 10% next month. Season tickets and peak fares are regulated and will rise by an average 4.2%.

Many commuters pay huge amounts already. For example, an annual season ticket from St Albans to London is around £3,000. That will go up by over £120 in January.

Off-peak and anytime tickets in England and Wales are set to soar, according to the watchdog Passenger Focus because they are not regulated. An anytime return from London to Norwich will now be 9.2% dearer at £107.70. A day return from Holyhead-Llandudno will be 6.5% more expensive.

The ConDem coalition is pushing ahead with plans to reduce the £3 billion plus subsidy to the rail industry, a process that began under New Labour. That will result in ticket office closures and other “efficiency” savings.

The rail unions have launched a campaign to bring the railways back into public ownership. Today they were holding protests in Swansea and Cardiff. More actions are planned before Christmas.

They handed out Christmas cards with a "seasonal message" from the train companies, which promised commuters will have a 2013 "packed full of cancelled trains, staff cuts and ticket office closures" while the train companies are "making huge profits".

Rob Jenks, of transport and travel union TSSA, said: "We want to point out the dramatic rise in rail fares, a 30% increase in rail fares, compared to the average increase in people's wages of 11.9%.  So you can see there's a huge gap between what people can afford to pay and what people are having to pay.

"It's about fares, it's also about all the cuts the industry is facing as the government tries to allegedly balance the books but without taking the opportunity to actually look at what public ownership would bring and all the savings that would make by cutting out profit and various other things."

The Action for Rail campaign says that since privatisation, more than £11 billion of public funds has been “misspent” on debt write-offs, dividend payments to private investors,  and higher interest payments in order to keep Network Rail’s debts off the government balance sheet.

“At the same time, privatisation has failed to deliver on its promises. Genuine private investment makes an insignificant contribution to the railways, representing about one per cent of the total money that goes into the railway each year.  Our fares are among the highest in Europe, many of our services are overcrowded and rely on obsolete rolling stock.”

Obviously, there is no way the Coalition is going to contemplate public ownership as an option. And nor is Labour. Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle has only pledged to make sure that the limit on fare rises is applied more strictly. That’s really worth waiting for!

The savage reduction in living standards that will greet millions on January 1 is unprecedented. Rail unions ought to step up their action. RMT general secretary Bob Crow has in the past talked of a campaign of civil disobedience to fight the government. There couldn’t be a better time to put his words into action than right now.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Parliament as a dead parrot

The events in and around Parliament yesterday represent a watershed – not just for university students but for society at large. Higher education officially became a business and the present political process was shown to have less life in it than a dead parrot.

Years of emphasis on education as the way to success and overcoming accidents of birth are now associated with heavy debts which are impossible for many to contemplate. The hopes of a new generation are being dashed in front of their eyes.

The Tories, building on New Labour’s introduction of tuition fees, used the Lib Dems to impose a market model on universities, turning students into “customers” at a stroke. Ed Miliband, apparently the new leader of Labour, refused to commit himself to overturning the vote which transforms education into something for the wealthy.

No wonder students were driven to confront the state in the shape of the Coalition, the police and the monarchy. And the cracks are showing. Not only were the Lib Dems hopelessly split (leaving Nick Clegg’s position vulnerable), but the police were barely able to cope.

The use of intimidation by police – truncheons, riot gear, cameras, horses, kettling, etc –probably spurred on protests as students became angrier and saw it as a challenge. The hundreds who attacked the Treasury and the Supreme Court could not have sustained this without the thousands who came to demonstrate and felt frustrated when the vote went through.

Outwitted by a spontaneous movement independent of the official “leaders” of the
National Union of Students – who never opposed the original introduction of fees – the police lost control and landed the heir to the throne in the middle of it all. “Off with their heads” hadn’t been heard on London’s streets for some time – until last night.

Furthermore, the students have shamed the leaders of the trade union movement, apart from a minority like Bob Crow of the transport RMT who mobilised his members to join yesterday’s demonstrations. Leading bureaucrats from Unite and other unions are actually going round cities like Leeds telling Labour councillors they have to implement the cuts.

Their refusal to call members into actions against the cuts – and £9,000 tuition fees are a direct consequence of the savage reduction in state support for universities – left students vulnerable to police attacks on London’s streets.

Students, by contrast, are united by the sweeping nature of cuts which affect them all. Not just those already at university but those at colleges (who face the end of maintenance allowances) and schools. They are aware of what their parents had and are enjoying their support in opposing tuition fees.

A spirit of altruism prevails, embracing common interests between poorer and better off students and wider interests of society. Students around the world, from Pakistan to France, are following the struggle in Britain because education is under attack in every country.

Global capitalism is in crisis, as we have tried to explain in our booklet Beyond Resistance (which you can download for free). The state, which props up the system, is transferring the cost of formerly public services like education entirely on to the backs of those who use and need them.

The social system – the government, the state, the corporations and the banks – has lost any moral authority to rule. Its mandate from the ruling elites is to restore capitalism, whatever the cost. Creating a sustainable alternative now becomes a practical necessity. Students have seized the initiative. They are in the best position of all too inspire the wider population to create People’s Assemblies (see tomorrow’s event) to challenge and defeat a state that is heading towards outright suppression of all dissent.

Corinna Lotz, AWTW secretary
Paul Feldman, communications editor

All bark and no bite

There was dismay and anger amongst the several thousand trade union members who crowded Westminster Central Hall; some including a large number from the prison officers union, couldn’t get in to the TUC’s anti-cuts rally. People had travelled from Lancashire, Devon, Cornwall, Northamptonshire and around London to take part in the protest meeting and lobby of MPs.

As well as the Prison Officers Association, there were big delegations from Unison, actors’ union Equity, rail and transport workers, public services unions UNITE and GMB, the National Union of Teachers and the Right to Work Campaign. Screen actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Roger Lloyd Pack said they opposed cuts in the arts which will privilege the rich. They all shared a deep anxiety as it emerged that around half a million jobs are to go by 2015.

Tony Woodley, joint secretary of the UNITE trade union, pointed out that for every four public sector jobs scrapped by the cuts, three more would follow in the private sector. He pointed out that the Lib-Con coalition has no mandate for the cuts, and that people “did not vote for the dismantling of their schools, hospitals and communities.”

“Cuts on this scale make no sense,” he said – but they make sense to the coalition, the bankers and the IMF. It’s the survival of the capitalist system that is at stake for them.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber continued the myth that the cuts are just a political choice, not an economic necessity for the ruling class: "They want us to believe....this is economic necessity. Yet economic experts across the spectrum warn us that the cuts are too deep and too rapid.”

Dave Prentis of Unison warned that if the government doesn’t listen, “we will be back. For every one of us in this room today, we will bring a hundred more. We’ll march in our thousands and we’ll vote in our millions,” he said in a fit of demagogy. But vote for what? For New Labour Mark 2?

None of the trade union leaders have any answers. In fact they are determined to hold back any serious movement by workers in the face of the re-shaping of the entire British state. Asked why the British workers were not angry as those in France, Woodley cited the anti-trade union laws making striking difficult. But if they were serious about halting the cuts, trade union leaders would bring every member out and let the law go hang. By directing all their fire towards parliament and the next election nearly four years hence, they hope to act as a lightning rod to defuse and disarm any movement.

And where was Milliband? He was in hiding from the trade union leaders who got him the Labour leadership. The reality is a New Labour government would be doing the same – and it may not be too long before they too are co-opted into this government of desperate decline.

Today’s spending review is not the result of a nasty bunch of old-style Thatcherite Tories. It is a response to the most serious economic and financial crisis of the capitalist profit-based system. As Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, speaking in the Midlands, made plain. Deep tensions underlay discussions at the International Monetary Fund meeting last week, he said.

Global currency conflicts, particularly between the US and China, are evidence of profound disagreements about the way to deal with the crisis. A 1930s-style collapse of business activity and international trade is possible. So much for the cuts being an “ideological exercise”! They are the ruling class’ response to an uncontrollable crisis of the system.

Fighting against the cuts agenda means challenging the ruling class by working for a transfer of power, property and control to a democratically elected and accountable network of peoples’ assemblies http://aworldtowin.net/frontline/BuildPeoplesAssemblies.html. Come to the Beyond Resistance conference on December 11 to make this come alive.

Corinna Lotz and Peter Arkell
A World to Win

Firefighters' union fights for its future

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which has consistently fought to defend the wages and conditions of its members, is about to engage in a momentous struggle in London that could well determine its very future as an organisation. So much is at stake that the FBU needs all the practical and active support it can muster from other unions.

Tory leaders of the Greater London Authority (GLA) are planning to sack over 5,600 firefighters and re-employ only those prepared to sign a new contract that severely reduces their conditions. The contract is being unilaterally imposed after the London FBU failed to reach a negotiated agreement with the employers.

The capital's firefighters are to stage eight-hour walkouts on 23 October and 1 November following a strike ballot in which 79% of FBU members voted in favour. Employers have already removed 27 fire engines from stations and handed them to private contractor AssetCo, which has strike breakers standing by.

That fire engines can be handed over just like that to a private firm is a result of decisions taken by the previous New Labour government, which the Tories are building on. It never forgave the FBU for holding a national strike eight years ago which led ultimately to the union’s break from Labour.

Conservative chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority Brian Coleman said: "I have to say, firefighters who don't sign the new contract won't be re-employed." In a reference to former US president Ronald Reagan's move to sack 11,000 striking air traffic controllers who refused to return to work in the early 80s, Coleman told London radio station LBC: "If it means 'doing a Ronald Reagan' – where he got rid of the air traffic controllers – I've got 948 firefighters who voted not to go on strike, together with the non-union members and the officers, I reckon 2,000 will sign their new contract."

Fire commissioner Ron Dobson and Coleman want to extend the day shift by two or three hours, a move which would wreak havoc on FBU members’ family lives as well as lead to cuts in fire cover throughout the capital (as revealed in a top-secret document leaked to the FBU). Thousands of firefighters have rallied and marched since the moves were announced in August.

London FBU leaders who called the strike ballot urged firefighters not to “be bullied out of our jobs”, and told them that a “yes” vote “may be the single most important act of your career”. Members responded positively, with an overwhelming “yes” on a 79% turnout.

The GLA’s anti-union stance is in a foretaste of what is rapidly coming up the line. Workers throughout the public sector are preparing to defend jobs, services and working conditions ater the spending axe falls this week. The FBU is joining a march against the cuts this Saturday, called by the rail union RMT, and is organising its own rally and lobby of Parliament on November 17 against systematic plans to wreck the fire service.

Clearly the FBU and the RMT, which is striking against job cuts on the Underground, are the first in the firing line. With the destruction of the FBU as an organisation the aim of the Tories, the old union adage that an injury to one is an injury to all was never more appropriate.

FBU and RMT leaders should appeal to their members to support joint, indefinite strikes against the cuts and the Tory-led GLA. Such a call could inspire other workers in the public sectors whose own union leaders are running for cover rather than standing firm. RMT leader Bob Crow has already called for unions to link up with local communities to broaden the fight against the coalition. The vicious attack on the FBU is as good an opportunity as any to put that policy into practice.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

TUC faces both ways as crisis looms

That the Trades Union Congress (TUC) is even talking about taking action against the Con-Lib government’s planned spending cuts reflects the deep anger of public sector workers and their willingness to fight back. Most union leaders, however, clearly want to avoid a confrontation with the coalition.

The all-embracing composite motion that the TUC is set to adopt in Manchester this week hardly disguises sharp differences within the trade union leadership. On the one side, the transport union RMT and the public and civil servants PCS – led by Bob Crow and Mark Serwotka – want co-ordinated industrial action sooner rather than later.

Crow said at the weekend that if there was a "concerted effort by this new government to attack workers in all different parts of society" then workers taking action should "co-ordinate that resistance to defend working men and working women".

But the major unions like Unison, Unite and the GMB, want to emphasise public campaigns to win support for opposing the cuts agenda. Les Bayliss, who is hoping to be general secretary of Unite, said: "Strikes will also change the victims – our members – into the villains of the piece. The story will get changed from government savagery to union militancy."

In the middle, TUC secretary Brendan Barber is looking for a deal with the Cameron-Clegg government. Behind-the scenes manoeuvres are already in train. The first action point of the resolution calls on “the Government to consult the General Council [of the TUC] regarding the comprehensive spending review”. Reports suggest that senior Tories have already held secret talks with union leaders and that Cameron will meet Barber soon.

The resolution, after 1,138 words of preamble, calls on the General Council to “support and co-ordinate campaigning and joint union industrial action, nationally and locally, in opposition to attacks on jobs, pensions, pay or public services”. Yet, as a report from the GMB union shows, the jobs slaughter is already well under way, with 150,000 redundancies planned across the public sector. If the time to act is not right now, when is it?

The whole mistaken tenor of the eclectic TUC resolution is to label the coalition’s plans as “ideologically driven”. Yet the same motion offers support to workers resisting the cuts in Spain and Greece (as well as other countries), where the governments call themselves “Socialist”, which rather shows that more than “ideology” is involved.

There is no reference to the global economic crisis and the term “capitalism” is studiously avoided. For the fact remains that, for all their bluster, New Labour would be carrying out the same cuts because they are a consequence of the recession combined with the demands of the financial markets that fund government deficits. In fact, many of the job losses now going through are the result of decisions taken by the Brown government and not the coalition.

The TUC has faced three grave crises in the last 80-odd years. The first was in 1926, when a Tory government imposed wage cuts on the miners. A General Strike was betrayed as it gathered strength and the miners were literally starved back to work. In 1984-5, the miners heroically fought to save jobs and communities – and again the TUC stabbed them in the back, this time through inaction.

The third crisis is the present one, against a government that intends to impose the full burden of the capitalist crisis on the backs of public sector workers and those who depend on services of one kind or another. Unions like the RMT and PCS have a responsibility to prevent the TUC right-wing from betraying the movement once again.

This will mean enforcing a split in the General Council against those preparing a deal with the coalition and mobilising communities against the government. Ultimately, this government is not for turning but it is weak and could be brought down by widespread and sustained opposition. What to replace it with is the biggest question of all.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Transport workers break the mantra

At last – a group of workers have broken through the mantra of There Is No Alternative, pumped out by the government and the mass media.

Around 10,000 trade unionists belonging to the Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) and the Transport and Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) are defying the Lib-Con coalition’s mantra that civilisation as we know it requires massive cuts in public services, including public transport. They faced down a propaganda barrage by London Mayor Boris Johnson as they walked out yesterday on their 24-hour strike action.

Their action is in protest against Transport for London’s 800 job losses planned amongst station and platform staff to meet the spending cuts sought by the Department of Transport. Both unions say that cutting ticket office staff levels will endanger passenger safety.

Maintenance staff stopped work at 5pm on Monday, followed by drivers, signallers and station staff later in the evening. In a separate dispute maintenance staff employed by Alstom-Metro on the Jubilee and Northern Line held a 24-hour strike from Sunday evening. More stoppages are planned for October and November.

The strikes shut down large sections of London Underground, despite efforts by management to recruit skeleton staff. The RMT pointed to a London Underground circular which appealed for volunteers, including workers without the required Operational Licenses or with lapsed licenses in clear safety breaches.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said that London Underground were prepared to cut any and all corners in order “to bulldoze through their lethal cocktail of job and safety cuts. Sending out a few volunteers without the necessary Operational Licences and training to try and run a handful of trains is a disaster waiting to happen.”

The union says that such attempts to undermine the strike action “go to the very heart of the dispute which is all about London Underground hacking back staffing levels and cutting corners on safety in a dash to slash costs, regardless of the implications for the travelling public.”

“Instead of playing fast and loose with safety it is about time that the Mayor and his officials took the issues as the heart of this dispute seriously, removed the threat of these savage cuts from above our members heads and cleared the way for meaningful talks aimed at protecting safety and safe staffing levels,” Crow insisted.

The strike has won considerable public backing. A poll conducted by LBC radio found that 73% of respondents backed the unions with only 26% supporting the employers at Transport for London. A separate poll conducted by YouGov showed that 60% of those surveyed believed that transport workers should have the right to strike, as opposed to 31% who disagreed. Fellow rail workers in the Zimbabwe Amalgamated Railway Workers Union (ZARU) have sent a message of support.

Keen to keep his job as Mayor of London, Johnson claims to oppose the 25% to 40% cuts in transport spending he says are demanded by the Coalition Treasury. Writing in yesterday’s Evening Standard, Johnson said that “cuts of that order would be disastrous for London transport network”. He wants the Crossrail project to continue - but clearly at the expense of London Underground staff.

Hiding behind the clear need to modernise and improve the Underground system the Mayor has accused the RMT of “cynicism” and “Luddism”. The union, Johnson claims, is staging a “trumped up and politically motivated attempt to have a pop at the Coalition government”.

But as TSSA leader Gerry Doherty, whose members voted 72.6 per cent in favour of strike action, says: "These cuts are being driven by the Government as much as by Boris so our battle is with Downing Street as much as TfL.”

Developing a modern and ecologically sound transport system is impossible over the backs of those who work in it. It requires not only the end of the Lib-Con coalition but fundamental economic and social change as outlined in A World to Win’s Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win Secretary

Coalition prepares for showdown with unions

A massive provocation against the trade unions in the public sector is openly being prepared by the Coalition government as it prepares to force through spending cuts that will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and wreck vital services.

The question is: how will union leaders respond to the Coalition’s relentless assault on jobs, wages, pensions and redundancy terms that is building on a daily basis? 

In the last 24 hours alone, there are reports of:

• government departments being asked to prepare cuts in budgets amounting to 40% of current spending, which would terminate much of what they do
• new laws to toughen the already-draconian anti-union legislation introduced by the Thatcher government and sustained by New Labour
• legislation to impose reduced redundancy terms on civil servants after the courts ruled that New Labour’s attempt at the same was unlawful.

Staging an effective strike in Britain is well nigh impossible – if unions stay within the law. Solidarity action in support of other workers is illegal, as is mass picketing. Even sticking to the rules on balloting is no longer sufficient. Employers are challenging virtually every ballot, enjoying favourable judgements in most cases.

Now the Coalition is reportedly planning to toughen the ballot regulations even further. At present, a simple majority of those voting is required. The government is discussing plans to impose a higher threshold and is also being lobbied by business to allow striking workers to be replaced with agency employees.

All this follows hard on the heels of a two-year pay freeze, which even Cameron admitted amounted to a salary cut as inflation moves ahead; immediate cuts to local authority budgets with job losses; and plans for higher public sector pension contributions. In October, the Coalition will announce details of unprecedented spending cuts which will take effect from 1 April 2011.

Cameron and Clegg are calling the bluff of the trade union leaders, who – with a handful of honourable exceptions representing firefighters, rail workers and civil servants – cosied up to New Labour for 13 years to no avail. The biggest public sector union, Unison, sat back as Blair/Brown carved up the health service and public services. Loads of cash was sent New Labour’s way, however, even though muted pressure to drop the anti-union laws was treated with contempt.

Union membership has declined to 6.9 million from over 12 million and is barely present in the private sector. But unions represent almost 60% of public sector employees and so are in a position to organise against the cuts. So far the signs are not inspiring. At its annual conference last month, Unison adopted a 1,300-word motion on the “austerity agenda” that in the same sentence referred to “working with employers who share our aspirations “(!), and being ready to take industrial action “where necessary”.

This will simply not cut the mustard. The Coalition is preparing for war while the main trade union leaders are looking for a deal. There is no compromise on offer, however. The crisis of global capitalism deepens day by day and this is what is driving the Coalition’s attempt to transfer wealth to big business at the expense of working people and the millions who depend on public services.

In September, the Trades Union Congress will meet in Manchester from 13 September. Those who are up for the fight like the rail union RMT have a responsibility to take the fight into Congress. Nothing less than the preparation of a co-ordinated, indefinite General Strike against the Coalition, alongside anti-capitalist policies that answer the crisis, will measure up to the task in front. The time for cheap talk is over.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Rail union calls for 'co-ordinated strikes' against Coalition

The imposition of austerity budgets to reduce budget deficits – adopted across Europe by governments of all persuasions – is suddenly looking too dangerous to investors in the global markets.

Now these gamblers are worried about a self-defeating downward spiral in Europe, and shifting their funds to Japan, whilst piling on the political pressure for President Obama to issue a new pile of fantasy finance by way of the Federal printing presses.

Indicators of deflation and declining production have emerged as the latest and biggest threat to the global capitalist economy. Not least is the Baltic Dry Index that measures the shipping of bulk goods around the world. This dropped by 40% last month.

These signs of the economy once again falling off a cliff – the much feared “double-dip” - are sure to aggravate the latest phase of the financial crisis. Tomorrow the European Central Bank’s emergency facility of €442bn (£361bn) of one-year loans ends. It’s the largest sum ever lent by a central bank. If the ECB fails to renew the scheme, there are fears that it will trigger a catastrophic banking collapse in Spain.

The chaotic reversals in the bond markets which lend to governments show that neither austerity budgets nor more quantitative easing/printing money can stop the rapid deterioration of the global economy.

In Britain, for example, it is reported that the Coalition’s cuts programme will add another 1.5 million to the dole queue. They will certainly not be taking part in a growth of consumer spending.

In essence, this destruction of people’s jobs and livelihoods is the inevitable consequence of the capitalist crisis – not its cause. It is too simplistic to view the cuts just as old-fashioned Toryism, especially when the Greek and Spanish “socialist” governments are doing the same and New Labour had a similar programme in store if it had won the general election.

This is the context for general secretary Bob Crow’s spirited address to the Rail, Maritime and Transport union’s annual conference. He told the delegates: “‘This ConDem administration has thrown down the biggest challenge to the trade union movement since Margaret Thatcher took on the National Union of Mineworkers.

"I have no hesitation in saying that it will take general and co-ordinated strike action across the public and private sectors to stop their savage assault on jobs, living standards and public services."

He went on: "The trade unions must form alliances with community groups, campaigns and pensioners' organisations in the biggest show of united resistance since the success of the anti-poll tax movement. Waving banners and placards will not be enough - it will take direct action to stop the Cameron and Clegg cuts machine.”

Crow is on the right track, but resistance alone cannot withstand or push back the impact of this crisis. Its scale is unprecedented and opposing the cuts must involve more than trying to force the government to change course, which would be a hopeless and futile pursuit.

A key lesson of the miners’ strike for jobs that Crow referred to is that the state and the discredited parliamentary system is a front for global corporate and financial interests and this is what we have to transform.

“General and co-ordinated strike action” - which would have to defy the anti-union laws to happen - is certainly needed. But the assault on jobs, living standards and public services can only be dealt with if the alliances Crow calls for become the basis for People’s Assemblies in a direct challenge to the power of the capitalist state to rule over us.

People’s Assemblies will go beyond protest, taking control of the resources that make up the productive economy and the financial system, and converting them from the playthings of global speculators into the means of meeting the needs of the majority.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Public transport cuts spell hardship and fumes

As striking maintenance workers on London’s underground draw attention to cuts and safety risks, Budget cuts herald the end of local bus services in the rest of the country.

Already in rural areas people are forced to use their cars whether they like it or not. Now buses could become extinct outside of town and city centres as a result of the 25% cut in the government’s transport budget, according to the Campaign for Better Transport.

They warn that cutting the Government’s Bus Service Operator Grant – a grant which allows local authorities to subsidise routes that are crucial, but unprofitable – will remove 94 million miles of existing routes from subsidy, will result in 7% fewer services and a 6.5% fares increase.

Campaign Executive Director Stephen Joseph said:
“Bus cuts and fares rises will be below the radar, happening at a local level around the country, but they will have a huge impact on the poorest people and communities, and act as a barrier for people to get access to employment, training and public services.”

The Transport and Communities and Local Government departments spend around £2.4bn a year on buses, including up to £1bn on pensioners' bus passes and more than £400m on fuel subsidies.

In London bus and tube ticket prices are set to rise by 7% next January, two per cent higher than the rate of inflation. This follows this year’s 3.9% increase in tube fares and 12.7% rise in bus fares.

Train fares could increase by over 33% across the board over the next five years as a result of the cuts. Train travel in Britain is already the highest in Europe, up to 50% higher on average. And a government review is currently trying to find out why the rail network is costing three times more to maintain than it did when it was in public ownership.

The Rail Maritime and Transport union says the network is dogged by a culture of underfunding, cuts and unacceptable safety risks to staff and passengers. RMT members working on the maintenance and upgrading of the London underground are striking today against cuts in staffing and safety, though the bankrupt company that walked away from the upgrade contract had already had £312m of public money.

Bus and train companies continue to make huge profits in spite of the recession.

Transport is the source of 24% of the UK’s Co2 emissions. 89% of that comes from cars, trucks and vans. Personal car travel is the biggest culprit, at 58% of the total. Buses contribute just 2% and rail 3%.

Millions of pounds are being invested in developing electric cars, and this research benefits from the government’s various tax breaks for ‘entrepreneurs’. But there is no evidence that electric cars will have more than a marginal impact on Co2 emissions. As Professor Roger Kemp, who chaired a review by the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

''Swapping gas guzzlers for electric vehicles will not solve our carbon emissions problem on its own. When most electricity in Britain is still generated by burning gas and coal, the difference between an electric car and a small, low-emission petrol or diesel car is negligible.”

The best, fairest and cheapest way to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions would be to get more people and goods off the roads and on to buses and trains. But that would be to defy the logic of profit. As far as the government is concerned, this is definitely not ‘the age of the train’ – or the bus.

One of the key roles of People’s Assemblies will be to challenge every bus route closure and fare increase, demanding that the books of the privatised transport companies are opened to scrutiny. We need a community-owned and controlled transport system, based on a well-financed integrated transport strategy.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Devolution leaves power in same hands

The Scottish people have first hand experience of what it is to have greater devolution without any real power over their lives and communities.

For example, the Scottish National Party-led government is colluding with privatised rail companies to break the RMT union and introduce cuts that threaten rail safety soon after the election.

The Edinburgh government agreed to indemnify Scotrail against losses resulting from the company going all-out to win a dispute over driver-only operation (DOO) on the Airdrie to Bathgate route. By defeating RMT members on this route, they hope to force in driver-only trains across the Scottish network.

Letters between Transport Scotland and Scotrail show clearly that:

- Scotrail planned to recruit and train an army of scabs, and expected Transport Scotland to foot the bill. It kindly offered to “cap” its claim against the Scottish taxpayer at £300,000 – about the same is would cost to settle the dispute, says the RMT.

- Scotrail threatened that it would not go ahead with expanding DOO unless ministers agreed to indemnify it against losses from industrial action.

And since Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson admitted to RMT that there was no economic case for scrapping guards on this route, this is clearly a union-busting exercise and nothing more.

During the Westminster elections, SNP leader Alex Salmond’s only policy has been low level pork-barrel politics, where he prays for a hung parliament so that Scottish Nationalist MPs can play the same role as Ulster Unionists in propping up the Major Tory government of 1992-97. This might keep a few more jobs for the élite in Scotland, but it won’t stop wholesale cuts in public spending.

The SNP offers fine rhetoric about cancelling Trident, but knows it is entirely dependent on the Westminster government, which over the next three years will wipe out whole swathes of public services in Scotland.

In fact, last year they drew up plans for cuts of up to 5%, and transport is likely to be a key target. Regional transport bodies set up to work for integrated transport, have lost their funding and the SNP government plans to put transport back into central management.

This combination of cost-cutting, constant failed restructuring, and decisions that have more to do with ensuring the jobs of senior officials than providing better services, is about as much as the Scottish people have got from the long struggle for devolution.

Between August 2007 and August 2009, the numbers of young people on Jobseeker's Allowance rose by more than 100% in six local authority areas: Borders (109%), East Dunbartonshire (116%), East Lothian (158%), East Renfrewshire (143%), Midlothian (144%) and South Lanarkshire (114%).

The SNP and the other leading parties are as silent about the extent of the cuts coming in Scotland as the main parties in England. Labour MSPs are even claiming there will be an INCREASE in public spending if New Labour is re-elected nationally!

Almost 100,000 jobs are threatened by the cuts, but the Scottish banks at the centre of the financial collapse are about to post much-improved profits. The oil corporations, have done better than expected in the North Sea this year – but none of this will improve the lot of jobless youth or halt the cuts.

There is no mechanism for transferring increased private profits to improve the lives of ordinary people. And this would still be true if Scotland were entirely independent, but still ruled by the same corporate interests as it is today.

Nowhere more than in Scotland does AWTW’s policy of “Hang on to your vote – Build People’s Assemblies” have greater resonance because there is no way that a real transfer of economic and financial power to ordinary people will be achieved through the Edinburgh Parliament.

Penny Cole

* The RMT is holding a lobby outside the Scottish Parliament from 12.30 tomorrow as MSPs debate the rail dispute.

The stakes couldn't be higher

The stakes are being raised in the confrontation between BA management and cabin crew members of Unite who are fighting to protect jobs and conditions. Coming a quarter of a century after the end of the biggest confrontation between unions and the state when the miners fought pit closures in a struggle lasting a year, the company’s reaction to the strike means it is more than just another industrial dispute.

BA chief executive Willie Walsh has overt and covert backing from the state in the form of New Labour and all the major political parties as well as every single major media outlet that endlessly highlight the predicament of stranded passengers. Newspapers like the Daily Star and the Evening Standard spend large sums to dish up the dirt on union leaders like Derek Simpson and Bob Crow.

The cabin crew strike is, therefore, a crucial test case. From the employer’s and government’s point of view, any resurgent trade unionism must be nipped in the bud. That is why there is similar hostility to the plan by members of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union to stage the first national strike for 16 years to block the loss of 1,500 jobs.

A few days ago, the BBC hosted a discussion on its “Moral Maze” programme in which it was said that the right to strike should not exist. This was supported by former Tory MP Michael Portillo. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated a similar view pontificating that “we cannot tolerate large-scale industrial disputes in this country, particularly at this time as the economy comes out of recession.”

While BA claims that the strike is costing the company £7 million per day, financial analysts in the City have estimated a daily loss of £15 to £20 million. Calling on BA to negotiate a “sensible” agreement, Unite estimates that seven days of strike will cost the company over £100m. When a company is prepared to sustain losses on this scale, Unite is right to say that BA “has embarked on an ambitious and expensive attempt to destroy trade unionism among its cabin crew”. But Unite leaders are failing to draw the key lessons from history and are pussy-footing around. We have been here before.

At “Digging the Seam”, a three-day conference held the University of Leeds last week, participants reflected on the consequences and legacy of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. The outcome of that year-long confrontation was that members of one of Britain’s most powerful unions, the National Union of Mineworkers were compelled to return to work. Thousands of its members ended up in jail and thousands more sustained injuries due to police violence. Within a decade the NUM was reduced to a shadow of its former self by the destruction of the coal industry. Pit village communities continue to suffer devastation.

Just as then, the struggle being conducted by BA cabin crew and rail workers is more than just an industrial dispute. It is over rights to have a job and provide a service to their fellow human beings under terms which are not dictated by a management motivated solely by shareholder returns.

The history of a single union taking on a ruthless employer under conditions of economic and political crisis is highly relevant in today’s situation. Even more now than then, no single group of trade unionists in today’s globalised world and with a far smaller trade union movement, can take on and defeat a state-backed company.

These confrontations come as Alistair Darling admits that New Labour is preparing public spending cuts which will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s. Treasury cuts will add up to a staggering 25% of departmental budgets and will last until 2017, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It warns that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain”. The employers and the state have launched a war on several fronts. And Unite is funding New Labour’s attempt at re-election!

An increasing danger is that with the present bunch of union leaders patently incapable of learning from history and organising a co-ordinated resistance that defies laws banning solidarity strikes, groups of workers will be picked off one by one. Firm, decisive, bold leadership is key to the outcome of these struggles. At this point in time, its absence in the trade union and working class movement is there for all to see.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Rail network heads for meltdown

The Faustian bargain between New Labour, the state and capitalist corporations is collapsing around the government’s ears and nowhere more so than in the rail industry. Led by the debt-ridden National Express, many companies that hold the rail franchises sold to them by the government are close to pulling out of their contracts because they can’t make enough profit to pay their way.

Although the railways were privatised by the Tories, New Labour quickly embraced the notion of public-private partnerships with even greater enthusiasm than its predecessors. An astonishing one-third of all “public services” are now in the hands of the private and voluntary sectors, with total contracts valued at more than £80 billion a year.

Determined to eliminate state subsidies year by year, New Labour has sought the highest bids for rail franchises. In August 2007, National Express agreed to pay £1.4 billion over seven years and four months for the East Coast franchise. GNER had been unable to keep up payments, despite offering much less. Only 18 months into the new franchise, National Express is looking for a get-out clause – or more money from the state.

The East Coast line, which links London with Edinburgh via York and Leeds, carries 17 million passengers a year and employs 3,100 staff. But passenger numbers are falling because of the recession (combined with the ludicrously rail fares). The transport group has £1.2 billion in debts. It has already made 700 workers redundant in the last six months.

Other companies are in similar difficulties, says the rail union RMT, which has warned of a meltdown on the rail network. If the National Express franchise collapses the firm could also be stripped of its East Anglia and c2c franchises. There are also question marks over Stagecoach’s South West Trains franchise and Arriva is facing heavy losses on its Cross Country line.

The rail debacle comes the wake of the fiasco on the London Underground, where Metronet, one of the companies contracted to modernise the system, pulled out last year. Private funding of the project was insisted on by Gordon Brown when chancellor. It has virtually bankrupted the network and led to soaring fares. There are similar stories to be told in areas like school and college building.


Now the government is trying to repeat the policy with the part-privatisation of Royal Mail. It wants a global corporation like TNT to take a share in the business to provide the investment to “modernise” the postal service, with all that would mean in terms of job losses and rising charges.

Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, is right when he says: “What we have now is sub-prime companies running essential public services and that’s the consequence of rail privatisation. Rather than reading ransom notes from these companies RMT will be stepping up the political and public campaign to get shot of them.”

Crow wants the government “to step in now and begin the process of renationalisation” and warns that it would be “political suicide” to bail out National Express. New Labour is, however, committed in blood to the pact with the devil of global capital that it made long before it even came to power in 1997. This deal says that the government will deploy the state, using taxpayer resources, to further the ambitions and profits of the corporations, both economic and financial.

The global crisis of capitalism has exposed all sides of the once cosy arrangement that drove forward the globalisation of the economy. Banks are broke, corporations can’t make profits and the state itself is staring bankruptcy in the face. Capitalism isn’t working, from whichever angle you look at it from, and the development of alternative economic AND political models, in theory and practice, is the priority.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

RMT leads jobs fightback

While the leaders of most trade unions are flying as fast as they can away from any confrontation with government or employers, the RMT rail union is in serious battle with the companies that run trains. The RMT, in the eyes of many, are the true defenders of the rail system.

Yesterday the union, which has a policy of resistance to job and pay cuts, announced plans to ballot its 10,000 members on the London Underground (LUL) for strike action against the threat of 3,000 redundancies and a virtual pay cut for some of its members.

“London Underground seems to think that observing agreements is optional, and its plan to cut jobs is simply unacceptable,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said.
“After three months of stonewalling, LUL has also tabled what is at best a five-year pay freeze which it knows full well could never be accepted, and its managers appear to have been given the nod to unleash a fresh round of bullying.”

And a blizzard of other disputes is breaking out on the railways. Conductors at London Midland have voted by 8 to 1 for a series of strikes on the question of Sunday working. RMT members at First Capital Connect have voted by more than three to one to strike, and at National Express East Anglia by more than two to one for action, after the employers refused to provide unequivocal assurances that there would be no compulsory redundancies. At South Eastern 1,400 RMT members are in dispute over questions of safe working in new trains and job cuts, while at Network Rail the union is demanding an end to cuts in vital engineering work that threatens to undermine railway safety and cost 1,000 jobs.

It is the spectre of falling revenues and the economic crash that is driving the train companies to these provocative actions. The government plans to reduce the annual subsidy to the train operators from a £5bn (that is about half their total operating costs) today to around £3bn by 2014, while the crash will result in a fall in numbers of passengers on the trains for the first time for many years.

The rail industry, fragmented and chaotic since its privatisation in 1993, and deeply unpopular in the minds of most travellers for the emphasis by the operating companies on profits at the expense of service (as the RMT keeps on pointing out) is in a poor position to start a general offensive on jobs and wages which may well be seen by the public as vindictive and an attack on safety, which is exactly what it would be.

Crow says that government policy effectively subsidies redundancies and adds: “Private rail operators have demonstrated time and again that their shareholders always come first, and it is time for rail operations to be returned to the public sector where they can be run in the interests of passengers, the economy and the environment.”

The question of questions is: how can a return to public ownership be achieved? And not just the old-fashioned bureaucratic state ownership, under which the network was slashed to the bone. No one in the RMT seriously believes New Labour will attack or take over the rail companies. The leadership of the union is quite aware of the true pro-capitalist, anti-union nature of this government and owes them no allegiance whatever, having disaffiliated from Labour some time ago.

Crow and the RMT leaders have an opportunity to build a big movement amongst commuters and travellers AGAINST New Labour and to stimulate a discussion about how public ownership can be established. The union is sponsoring the People’s Charter for Change which could easily be turned from a signature-gathering venture into a vehicle for mobilising for far-reaching political change.

Peter Arkell

Support unions' call for new People's Charter

Leaders of two major unions laid down a significant challenge at the weekend by calling for a mass campaign for a new People’s Charter, echoing the spirit of the great struggle for representation and political power waged by the 19th century Chartist movement.

Bob Crow of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) workers joined with Brian Paton of the Prison Officers Association (POA) to open a debate on a new course that goes beyond parliamentary politics. Speaking at a conference called by the RMT, Crow explained how his union had been expelled from New Labour after making the decision “to give money to organisations which support the working class more than the Labour Party”. New Labour “stands for privatisation, the continuation of anti-union laws and a European super state”, as did the Liberal and Tory parties.

The RMT leader also condemned the Trades Union Congress for providing “no leadership whatsoever as tens of thousands, if not millions, now face redundancy” and rightly insisted: “The people with real power are the global capitalists who dictate what the government does”.

It was urgent to work together in a better way and a campaign for a People’s Charter would provide “an alternative to what was taking place” and to involve millions in signing and debating. Nothing would be achieved, he stressed, by protesting outside conferences in Blackpool or Brighton. “It was better to sit on the runway”.

Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers Union, which in 2007 held an illegal strike for higher pay, warned that the far right would fill “the political vacuum” if an alternative movement was not built. The main political parties provided no real choice at all, he told the gathering.

“A People’s Charter is a good first step, based on objectives which we all share. We want trade union and human rights and we won’t get them from this government. We want liberty, justice and peace. I want to see the shackles that currently tie us down broken.” His next union conference will invite a range of left parties together to work for an alternative in the spirit of this approach.

Mary Davis, of the London Metropolitan University's Centre for Trade Union Studies, added a historic dimension to the call for a Charter. The Chartist movement of the 19th century had created the first political party of the working class, but explained that “our real history is hidden from us”.

The conditions for going beyond electoral politics were also raised by MP John McDonnell, chair of the Labour Representation Committee . He told the conference: “Electoral politics may not be where it’s at in the coming period. Not asking people for votes but organising for direct action. We may see forms of mobilisation on a mass scale which we haven’t seen for generations.”

Perhaps he had in mind possible reactions to the imminent government approval for a third runway at Heathrow, despite massive local opposition to the plans. McDonnell welcomed the concept of a Charter – whether it was a People’s Charter or a Workers Charter – to provide an alternative political analysis. Discussions and collaboration, recognising and appreciating each others’ differences would make a more sophisticated debate possible.

A World to Win unreservedly welcomes this powerful new call for a People’s Charter. In October, A World to Win launched its own People's Charter for Democracy to raise the question of a revolutionary alternative to the political and economic status quo.

As a speaker from the Wirral asked at Saturday’s conference: “Who is going to implement this Charter?” Our Charter does not appeal to the existing government or the state behind it. Rather, it suggests new ways in which the unrepresented masses can achieve new forms of representation and organise a transfer of power itself out of the hands of corporations and the capitalist state. We submit AWTW’s Charter as a contribution to this crucial debate to which the RMT and POA have given a tremendous boost.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Tube cleaners show the way

While Londoners struggle to get about on the Tube system each day, workers who keep the carriages and stations clean are enduring Dickensian conditions and employment practices. An heroic three-day strike by mostly migrant workers belonging to the RMT transport union has exposed how the employers run a brutal hire-and-fire, low-wage system.

At a rally at the House of Commons earlier this week, London Underground cleaners’ leader Clara Osagiede denounced contractors as “feudal lords”. Managers behaved like characters out of Dickens’ Oliver Twist towards their workforce. “While Tubeline and Metronet make record profits and managers earn £600 per day, cleaners work under terrible conditions,” she said. The 700 cleaners voted almost unanimously for a strike in pursuit of a London Living Wage and to end wage rates as low as £5.50 an hour.

The strike, she said, was also about dignity and fairness, as well as improved conditions including free travel. Cleaners needed this especially they were sometimes had to move from one station during their work. The London Underground is one of the most notable transport systems in the modern world, Osagiede said, and yet cleaners were treated as if they were slaves. She herself had been suspended from work a number of times for her trade union activities.

Tube cleaners were bullied, denied sick pay and pension rights and “looked upon like non-entities” until the RMT union came to their rescue and educated them”, she told fellow trade unionists and anti-privatisation campaigners. She thanked activists from Feminist Fightback and others for supporting the cleaners with direct action and on the picket lines. She denounced the leadership of the Unite union which had allowed its members to be used as strike breakers.

At the packed meeting, called by the Labour Representation Committee and sponsored by MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, RMT president John Leach stressed that contractors like ISS, ITX, ICM and GM were not “cowboy outfits”. In reality, the Mayor of London and the government stood behind them. RMT research had revealed that Tubeline was making £1m in profits per week for the three lines it managed.

Yet cleaners not only endured low wages, they did not even have the right to a disciplinary hearing but could be sacked without knowing the reason. Conditions had returned to the days of casual labour, when the first workers to queue up each morning would get a day’s work and the rest dismissed. He believed that the struggle for rights would “get harder before it gets easier”.

Matt Wrack, leader of the Fire Brigades Union, pointed out that bonuses paid in the City of London were higher than the yearly government spending on the fire and emergency services, Wrack spoke of the link between the struggle against racism and for trade union rights. “This year is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, who was supporting a strike of municipal workers in Memphis when he was killed,” the FBU secretary said. “Today, under New Labour, a city-wide strike of workers in solidarity with the cleaners would be illegal.”

The solid support given by cleaners to the RMT’s strike call and their courage in the face of suspensions and racist discrimination proves that even the most downtrodden and vulnerable workers are ready to respond, given leadership. A World to Win salutes their courage. At the same time, as a number of speakers emphasised, they face the full brunt, not only of London Underground but the New Labour government acting on behalf of cleaning companies, many of which are now part of global corporations.

Securing the most fundamental rights today means working for a system in which anti-trade union laws have no place. As other unions get drawn into the struggle against rising prices and sackings in the gathering economic storm, A World to Win calls on all trade unionists to support our festival for rights on October 18.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win Secretary

Tube workers defy 'brutal' logic

The RMT rail union may have suspended the strike by a group of Tube maintenance workers while it considers a fresh offer, but not before enduring hysterical press and political attacks. What angered the London media and politicians from Ken Livingstone to Gordon Brown, was the fact that a group of workers rejected soothing words and actually dared to take action that was more than just a gesture. The London Underground network ground to a halt following the strike by staff who formerly worked for Metronet. This consortium, set up after New Labour’s partial privatisation of the network, collapsed recently, leaving it in the hands of administrators and Transport for London, which is part of the mayor’s Greater London Authority.

Union action on this scale is not supposed to happen any more. But while leaders from unions like Unison roll over like pussycats and allow the government to break up the health service, and dither about action over a pay award that is actually a pay cut, others are not so compliant. Last week the Prison Officers Association led an illegal walk-out. Then the Tube maintenance workers launched their strike over pensions and job security, both undermined by the collapse of Metronet. Led by general secretary Bob Crow, they also demanded the return of the Tube maintenance system to public ownership.

This was too much for the right-wing media and politicians. Yesterday the Evening Standard devoted page after page to an assault on the RMT and Crow in particular. One edition had a picture of Crow on the front page alongside a banner headline declaring ‘MAN WHO STOPPED LONDON ITS TRACKS’. On pages two and three, interviews with commuters ran under the headline ‘travellers forced to endure days of delay and frustration express their disgust at Tube strikers on a good wage’. Leaving aside the fact that the strike was actually nothing to do with wage demands, the barrage continued on the following pages.

Another double-page spread ran under the headline ‘Union plays politics and costs £50m a day’ and a sub-heading which carried the predictable report that business leaders condemned the RMT’s ‘pointless’ action over jobs and pensions. Underneath there was an attempted character assassination of Crow as the country’s “most hardline and notorious” union leader. It reported that he had been banned from a pub near his union HQ for singing too loudly! The report had to acknowledge, however, that he had built up the union’s membership. Further on in the paper, Mayor Livingstone had a whole page to condemn what he described as a “deeply damaging and pointless strike”, an article no doubt written by his £100,000-a-year advisers, many of whom laughingly claim to be left-wingers.

But the real issues were posed in another column, this time by financial editor Anthony Hilton. He wrote that the union was wrong to think its members had any more right to “future guarantees of their income and job security than anyone else who has worked for a company which went bust. It’s brutal, but it’s capitalism.” The logic is inescapable. Don’t bother resisting – it’s market capitalism stupid. You have to love it because there is no alternative. Well, the RMT – which is no longer affiliated to capitalist New Labour – is challenging that entirely business point of view. While prime minister Brown goes on constructing his one-party state, where confrontation and classes are declared things of the past, resistance is growing to Hilton’s “brutal” society. The RMT leaders have, in effect, said that another world is necessary and their action should be supported.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor