Power to Mick Lynch

Richie said:
Of course. So we should give inflation level rises to everyone? Or just lower paid (how would we determine this)?



Huh? This entire thread was started by the OP using these Twitter posts including the one I mention (videos of actual TV News interviews) so unless you are saying they have been doctored, I'm a little confused.

Also, why would the OP start a topic about the RMT strikes without fully understanding what they and the employers are asking for... I'd assumed the OP had researched this before posting :confused:

I'll go get them and come back to you... I would state them here but I would imagine you'll want to be able to get the source
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Does it say in any of those videos from a reliable source that union conditions are "no modernisation" , I didn't hear that. (Before you post the definitive sources)
 
Richie said:
Cute but I didn't state that the union stated "no modernisation" on the video you posted..I said that modernisation that the employers wanted was mentioned in one of them (or at least an example of it) - 1st video starts off about it from the start and up until around 30 seconds in (Sunday working which I will mention further down).



From various sources which I'll link at the bottom (still haven't figured out how to do bullet points on phone browser with new forum so excuse the layout)

Some of the modernisation points including working Terms and Conditions below that employers want to change:


1. Scrap 35 hour max week for new employees.

2. Savings through 2,500 redundancies (RMT want guaranteed no compulsory redundancies)

3. Replacing ticket offices with automated systems (no definitive number available)

4. A move away from Sunday voluntary working (incorporating it into the shift plan as standard and not voluntary)


Others go onto working practices like changing how tracks are checked using new technology rather than humans.


https://inews.co.uk/news/rail-worke...ispute-why-train-strikes-uk-explained-1695743

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/building-a-better-railway


Now I don't agree with some of the proposed changes however your question to me was:



The Union rejected modernisation in Feb:




SOURCE
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Come on man, you messed up now you're flailing around. YOU said THIS. You haven't provided a source that confirms what you said. I'll hazard a guess, it doesn't exist.
And the rest of their conditions to be met - no modernisation and no compulsory redundancies?
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Richie said:
If you're referring to the RMT rejecting modernisation - It's posted in the post above your:s right at the end.



SOURCE

If an employer's modernisation includes redundancies and changes to terms and conditions and the RMT don't want that then that's the same as rejecting the modernisation.

At no point did I say the videos you posted had anyone saying they rejected the modernisation as you inferred.

I had simply asked earlier in the thread if you think that, over and above the pay increase, should all other RMT demands to the deal be met i.e. the working terms and conditions, redundancies etc which you replied stating.you weren't fully aware of the finer detail and you'd need to see the details... I had, wrongly, assumed this meant you were going to go look.




On a side note about the strikes - I can't help but think that this may go on for some time (from other unions too) as the current government may have this opinion of trying to break the unions a'la Thatcher and the miners... They'll see it as a challenge and a game where the everyday citizens end up bearing the brunt from the political posturing.
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Nowhere does it say that the unions conditions were "no modernisation" . Nowhere.
+ "No modernisation" means none,nada,zero , not a wee bit, or certain facets, none.You said that, not me. I felt that would be a ludicrous position for a union to take. You've sought to prove your claim by spurious takes & flim flam. Your very creative paragraph stating something or other is "the same as rejecting modernisation" is actually mental.
You can't just make stuff up m8,I'll say it again, YOU said the unions conditions included "no modernisation" , this isn't true, the end.
 
Semple said:
We all know that was guff spouted by the PM. But again as per my previous comment - how do we realistically afford these substantial pay increases.
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Thing is, its not really pay increases is it? , one poster said he read that the union would accept 7%, that's a pay cut. Why are you not asking "How can we ensure these workers don't have their wages cut unfairly?"
 
Semple said:
Why should Rail workers be so special? Anyone who's not had an 11% pay rise this year has essentially had a pay cut - which also includes private sector who are supposedly sat on 8% increase.

If they bump everyone's pay up 11%, we'll be in the exact same position now, as things like food, materials, services, rents go up to accommodate the increased costs of the workforce.
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I didn't say they were special? & yes everyone is getting shafted, however typically the lot in charge will do everything they can to give you the bare minimum possible. Let's see what happens, it's very likely (imo) that workers would accept less than 11%, so accepting a paycut, imo this is very reasonable.
 
Hagar said:
Actually much of the 1970's was a labour government,74 to 79 before the winter of discontent brought Maggie to power.
We will see tomorrow the effects of RMT's proposed summer of discontent, or like Arthur Scargill, have they jumped the gun?
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Or is it provoked just like Thatchers government did to the miners, Scargill was right.
 
Hagar said:
I'm embarrassed if that comes to pass. But yes most of my vinyl collection stems from 1971 or thereabouts.

Ted Heath upset the miners first in 1974 so when the miners strike in 1984 kicked off, it was to the death for Scargill. He unwisely took the miners out without a ballot in the middle of the year with the promise that no pit would close. Impossible.
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Government wanted to impose a secret ballot, maybe he could have played it differently, but he was right.
 
Hagar said:
It is off topic, but the only way that Scargill was right us that they wanted to close pits. In the event the strike probably was the death knell of many more pits. The pit deputies did not strike but by themselves they could not fully protect mines from flooding or roof collapses.
His demands that no pit should close in hindsight from the environmental standpoint of today is bizarre but even then it was understood that dozens would close even if they had workable coal to be won. Scargill was wrong, at the time and in history.
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Yes it is OT but I`m sure you`ll allow me last word ;) . He was right, he said they had a hit list, they denied it & lied, this was later found to be true, DYOR. Reality is they did close the whole industry. Citing environmental issues with hindsight is a tad disingenuous is it not.

Anyway, back OT.
 
7 October 2021

Dear Member of Parliament

Train leasing companies pay dividends of £1 billion during the pandemic year

This morning, my union published a new report showing that the three companies who own and lease trains on our network paid themselves dividends of £950 million last year. That’s equivalent to 50% of passenger revenue last year and 23% of the £8.3 billion the taxpayer put into the industry to keep it afloat. You can read the report in full here: https://bit.ly/3oBF5Gs

My members put their lives on the line last year to keep the country moving through the pandemic. Some paid with their lives. Passengers did everything they were asked to, staying away where necessary, travelling when they had so, adapting to radical changes and living with fear. Much of the country pulled together to keep Britain going.

But for some people the pandemic was just business as usual. For the three rolling stock companies (Roscos) who own the vast majority of Britain’s trains the pandemic has posed, as they say themselves, no risk at all. The government has taken over payment of their lease charges and it has refused to cap either these charges or dividend payments by the rolling stock companies.

In return for the government’s extraordinary largesse with taxpayers’ money the Roscos have paid out massive dividends during the pandemic year and most of that money will have disappeared into offshore parent companies in Jersey or Luxembourg.

While the Secretary of State tells my members they should put up with a pay freeze because they’re lucky to have a job, he’s signing blank cheques to people who are shuffling millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into an opaque network of offshore companies.

The rolling stock industry has been a scandal for years. It is a broken model of train procurement, a relic from a period when the dogma of privatisation reigned supreme and it is high time to put it to an end. The government should be procuring trains and owning them itself not paying extortionate rents to parasites. But in the immediate term, I’m calling for a Windfall tax on the ROSCOs profits, which should be used to help fund a pay rise for staff and a fare rebate for passengers.

I hope you will support this call and write to the Secretary of State to this effect.

Yours sincerely,



Michael Lynch,

RMT General Secretary
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