RMT Strike Action

Back in March I blogged about the proposals contained within LU's "Operations Strategic Plan", or OSP. Back then I said that strikes on this issue were 100% likely, and today the RMT has unfortunately proven me to be correct, which normally the RMT reps at my depot would try to steer clear of doing.

In what the RMT describe as a "huge vote for action" against the proposed cuts in the number of station staff and ticket office opening hours, 3727 of their members cast votes of whom 2810 voted in favour of strike action. This is indeed a large majority, although it rather ignores the fact that only a third of their 10,000+ members in LU could be bothered to mark an X on a freepost form and take it to their local postbox - hardly a ringing endorsement of worker solidarity and job security fears.

The problem for the RMT is the same as it has been for all unions lately. They understandably want to protect their members from pay and job cuts, and to do this they need to resort to open conflict with management. But with the general population also scared for their livelihoods but not in unionised professions, public opinion quickly goes against the strikers. Now I've said before that public opinion isn't even close to being the most important thing for unions, but if the Mayor or central government get to a stage where they feel the people will put up with long strikes if the end result is a broken union, they might just take that risk at some point.

It will be interesting to see how these strikes pan out. They certainly can't be painted in the usual "greedy London Underground staff who don't know they're born walk out again to move pay from £700,000 per day to £900,000" way, so beloved of the press. LU passengers consistently tell us that the best thing about the company, and where it is better than other world metros, is that the staff are (mostly) visible and approachable. The RMT are striking over plans to reduce the number of staff that you see in stations, on the gatelines, on the platforms and behind ticket office glass. The union already has letters of support from disability pressure groups and the like, fearful of the effect that fewer staff will have on mobility.

So strikes are coming back to London Underground after a mere year hiatus. How the travelling public will react to these, though, is rather less clear than it could be.