By an RMT activist AFTER THREE DAYS of strikes and with four more days called, confidence among train crew is high. We are fighting for rail safety, and to protect our jobs. But with the Health and Safety Executive allowing poorly trained scab managers to replace striking guards and the Strategic Rail Authority waiving all penalties for failure to run a service, this dispute is not just with a dozen private operating companies but with the government as well.
To win, as well as upping the action, we need to up the political stakes too.
Within weeks of privatisation in 1996 the supposedly independent rail safety regulator, Railtrack Safety, had set up a working party with train operating companies to "review the role of the guard". ••.
No trade unions were invited. The working party remit was spelt out -"the natural reduction of the role of the guard". Instead of being responsible for the safety of the train, guards were going to be interested only in the welfare of passengers ("are you sitting comfortably") if they were to be provided at all.
After three years, with RMT train crew fighting to stop any changes, a Railway Rule change was forced through. Within three days, the Ladbroke Grove crash killed 31 people, and Railtrack was forced to admit that, "if the new rules had not already been brought in they would now have been suspended." Blocked
But after another three years of patient negotiation the RT's counterproposals are still being blocked. This after they have twice been independently assessed as safer than the current rules, and being endorsed by eight of the twenty-five train operating companies. Anti-union hawks among the train operating companies want a fight with the union. Rail Safety, the Strategic Rail Authority and the Health and Safety Executive are colluding to make this possible. Behind the scenes the government want to see rail workers hurt. right to do so. elling public.