transport, couriers and drivers

Solidarity Federation welcomes the overwhelming support for strike action as voted by RMT members across the UK. In the face of some of the most repressive anti-strike legislation in Europe, rail workers have delivered a resounding message to both train bosses and union bureaucrats: the time for talking is over, a national strike now.

As an Anarcho-Syndicalist union we stand in solidarity with rank and file rail workers as they fight against a pay freeze, safety-critical job cuts and attacks on their terms and conditions. Our members will join them on the picket line. We are aware that they are already facing state pressure from political and media lackeys to compromise – this will only escalate, probably into more restrictions on industrial action in an attempt to curb the effectiveness of a strike. Meanwhile, TUC bosses will prove their complicity by staying silent in public as they betray workers in private. It’s the same old tune.

Unite has suspended today’s strike by First Manchester bus drivers after the company made an improved offer in the dispute over pay.

Action planned for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have also been suspended while Unite ballots its 300+ members on the new offer. If it is accepted the dispute will have ended. If members reject the offer then strikes already scheduled for February 15, 17, 18, 21 and 25 will go ahead as planned.

Strike action began last month in the dispute over low rates of pay. The strike action was highly effective causing considerable disruption to bus services across Greater Manchester.

The lamentable state of public transport in the North of the country, not to speak of elsewhere, has even reached the tables of ministerial discussion in the government in London. The fact that Northern Rail has been taken from Arriva and given to the Operator of Last Resort (OLR), as the jargon goes, that is, the state, is a reflection of the decline of our public transport system and the need for a proper solution. Northern Rail was plagued by late and cancelled trains and over-crowding on a scale that if it had been in London would have seen a rapid solution. While privatisation has evidently failed the British public, it cannot be guaranteed that a process of nationalisation will be better – what we can be sure of is that it couldn’t be worse.

The recent strikes by conductors and train drivers - members of the RMT and ASLEF unions - have been the biggest railway strikes in decades.

As a local, Brighton SolFed has been supporting the local striking members. Our support has been through the attendance of pickets, and organising a benefit gig; to raise money for the local strike fund, and, most importantly, to show solidarity and get workers across industries together.

If you only read media reports, this would seem to be a simple dispute regarding who merely pushes a button to open the train doors.

Really, this is about our safety.

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) is the company that owns the privatised Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern, and Thameslink railway operators.

GTR want Driver Operated Only (DOO) trains, and to achieve this they want to get rid of the conductor’s safety critical role.

The Ryanair Don’t Care Campaign, supported by the Solidarity Federation in the UK and the IWA internationally, is calling for a Week of International Action against exploitation and recruitment scamming by Ryanair, starting on March 12.

Ryanair Don’t Care was started by John Foley after his daughter was sacked as a flight attendant mid-flight and abandoned abroad without any money. This led to the exposure of a cynical and highly exploitative recruitment scam by Ryanair.

Since the Hatfield train crash, The call for re-nationalisation of Railtrack has become a stock demand on the left. It has to be said that this is not an unrealistic demand. But where would it lead us?

Fresh from slaughtering in Iraq, the Labour Party can return once again to the enemy within - namely, the organised working class.

It is only a matter of time before we will see troops on the streets of Britain again - most likely over the firefighters strike. While the Government cannot employ troops against the guards strike on the railways, they are still doing all they can to defeat them. The guards are taking action as a result of rail bosses attempts to undermine their role by taking away the safety aspects of their jobs. The Government, through the strategic rail authority, have responded by guaranteeing to make up any losses the rail companies incur due to the strikes.

The recent train drivers union (ASLEF) leadership election was a shock to many rail union activists.

It had been thought that the current leader, Mick Rix would walk it, so he hardly bothered to campaign. Shaun Brady was seen as a right-wing Neanderthal no-hoper who had only managed to gain the support of a handful of branches compared with Rix, who had the backing of over 80 branches. While Rix sat on his backside, Brady got out and about with his populist arguments, ranging from antipolitical-correctness to opposition to asylum seekers.

If you want an example of how not to organise at work, look no further than ASLEF, the train drivers' union.

In Cat8, we reported on the election of Shaun Brady as leader – since then he has threatened to sack staff working at ASLEF head office and replace them with non-union labour. Why? Because they had voted to strike over bullying by none other than Brady himself. It is all part of the bitter ASLEF turf war between the “left” faction led by ex-leader Brian Rix and Brady's “right” faction (actually orchestrated by Adams).