Standing Up For Their Jobs
Posted: 05/02/2014 | Author: The Political Idealist | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Boris Johnson, London, Politics, RMT, solidarity, trade unions, transport, TSSA, tube strike |Leave a comment »Another strike bringing the London Underground to a near halt. More complaints about the “militant” RMT trade union and its leader, Bob Crow; another two days of gridlock in the capital; and more dark threats from the Conservative Party about another round of union-busting legislation.
However, the 48-hour strike by the RMT and the TSSA that is inconveniencing London is not the run-of-the-mill tube strike over pay. This is about fighting 950 job cuts that threaten to remove vital support for passengers. This is about resisting the creeping automation of London’s public transport and all the consequences that entails. This is about peoples’ livelihoods. For those of you unfamiliar with the dispute, trade union members are opposing plans to close all ticket offices on the Underground and fire the 950 staff who man them between other duties such as assisting disabled people onto trains. Transport for London (TfL), the arm of the city government which owns the Tube, says that only 2% of ticket sales are through the offices- the rest are made through ticket machines and Oyster smartcards.
Faced with that statistic, I too would say that the ticket offices must be an inefficiency. But that’s not true. Who are the 2 percent of customers who use the ticket offices? Tourists who don’t understand the equally complex route network and fares system, the “technology illiterate” who can’t use the ticket machines, including the elderly in particular. So what if it costs £50 million a year to provide an accessible service to these people, and a safe environment in the rest of the stations? If transport is a public service, it should be open to all, even if that means a few unprofitable decisions.
If Boris Johnson is prepared to condemn the RMT members who voted to strike as “bad workers” then he is only showing how skewed his outlook is. The workers who are forgoing two days’ wages and enduring massive unpopularity are not doing it because they fancy a day off. It’s because they value the service they provide, and value their jobs, or their colleagues, enough to fight to protect them. It might not make them soulless, exploitable units of labour, but it makes them exactly the right people defend our public service of transport. They deserve every success.
