Boycott Barclays Bank!

by New Worker correspondent

Palestinian rights campaigners have plastered tube trains in London to make sure that tennis fans travelling to Wimbledon this week know the truth about Barclays, the tournament’s sponsor. Campaign poster ads are going up across the London Underground faster than the authorities can take them down. And the message is ‘Boycott Barclays’! 
A number of British companies have seedy and nefarious financial ties with Zionist Israel. The ongoing genocide in Palestine has intensified calls for an immediate ceasefire and sparked an international campaign supporting Palestinians in their fight against oppression. Campaigners have been raising awareness on the economic ties a vast number of UK institutions have with companies that are providing Israel with the military and technological equipment to facilitate its oppressive regime. Barclays is one of them.
Barclays Bank is bankrolling Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians. Barclays provides investment and loans worth more than eight billion pounds to arms companies supplying Israel with weapons used in its genocide in Gaza, and military assaults across the West Bank. Barclays took over Tesco Bank on 1st November 2024 so campaigners are calling on all Tesco Bank customers to shut their accounts as part of the boycott of Barclays. 
The Boycott Barclays campaign began in 1969 when the bank was exposed as a major investor in racist, apartheid South Africa. In recent years the focus has been on the bank’s colossal investments in Zionist Israel. 
 It works. Recently, data revealed that the bank has stopped underwriting Israeli government bonds under pressure from our boycott and protests.  
We must continue our campaigning to force the bank to permanently and publicly withdraw as a primary dealer of Israeli government bonds, and to divest from all companies arming Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.
The Boycott Barclays campaign want as many people as possible to close their account on a single day, to send a clear message to the bank that its complicity in Israeli apartheid has a cost – it will lose a sizeable number of its customers who stand with Palestine, and this will have a greater impact if it is on a single day.
So if you’re still a Barclays or Tesco Bank customer, join the next mass account closure day on Thursday 30th July!

Tube strike solid!

by New Worker correspondent

RMT pickets get their message across in Brixton as London Underground workers shut down the network in a series of rolling strikes over pay this week. And at the TUC conference in Brighton RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey called on Mayor Sadiq Khan to attend a summit with the union to find a resolution to the escalating dispute. At the Brighton Centre Dempsey told delegates from across the six million strong trade union movement, “I’ve got a message for the Mayor. Instead of going on social media, instead of the old tired clichés, telling trades unionists to get round the table, you’re the Mayor of London, you’re the Chair of TfL.
“Stop going on social media, invite us to the meeting, let’s have a discussion, because I want to know what is going on in London”. He warned of more strike action if there was no resolution but pointed out that members did not want to be in this position. “We take no pleasure in causing disruption but we make no apology for fighting for our members. So if the mayor has any sense, he will reach out to us”.
Moving the unanimously backed motion which means the TUC collectively calls on the summit to take place the RMT leader said “this Congress calls on the mayor, to urgently convene a summit to resolve all these disputes, improve industrial relations, end outsourcing and defend ticket offices”.

RMT shuts down Tube

by New Worker correspondent

Some 4,000 striking station and revenue control staff shut down London Underground on Monday in a show of strength to oppose pension attacks and job cuts.
    Trains remained in depots across the network as picket lines spread across the combine despite heavy rain across the capital.
    600 station staff jobs will be lost if TfL (Transport for London) plans go through and RMT members face huge detrimental changes to their pensions and working conditions.
    RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: "I congratulate our station grade and revenue control staff members on London Underground for taking strike action in defence of their pensions and jobs.
    "The effectiveness and industrial power of these members cannot be underestimated. TfL, London Underground Limited (LUL) and the Mayor of London have had ample opportunity to negotiate with the union properly to avert this strike action today.
    "Their intransigence and stubbornness have left RMT members no choice but to act decisively. We will not rest until we have a just settlement to this dispute and we urge the Mayor to stand up to the Tory government who are cutting funding to TfL rather than try to pick a fight with tube workers."

London’s transport

NSSN support on the picket line

by New Worker correspondent

One area where the class struggle will be fought out is on the railways up and down the country, and perhaps most sharply, below ground in London. Rail unions have united in condemnation of the actions of the Mayor of London and Transport for London (TfL), which they say will lead to a loss of 600 Underground station jobs.
   On the London Underground (LU) workers have already taken strike action against detrimental changes to the Night Tube driver grade.
Transport for London (TfL) wants to rip up existing agreements and force drivers to do more Night Tube shifts, which RMT points out will ruin drivers’ work–life balance.
   The action caused major disruption on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. Whilst workers on only five tube lines took action, delays hit other lines as well, and members of the other train drivers’ union, ASLEF, refused to cross the picket line despite their union leaders accepting TfL’s proposals. In addition, some other RMT members not directly affected by the plans also struck in solidarity.
   The plans to cut 600 station staff are based on the assumption that people all use contactless tickets, which is nonsense given the large number of visitors needing to be told how to get from Hamleys to Harrods.
   Meanwhile, there’s more trouble at the Woolwich ferry. There has been a ferry crossing at Woolwich on the lower Thames since the 14th Century, but it sometimes seems as though industrial disputes have been going on for almost as long.
   In 2019, workers went on strike seeking a pay rise and improved safety after the new operators cut staff numbers and set new shift patterns after acquiring new ships. The following year they won good deal, securing 100 per cent furlough pay from then private operator Briggs Marine Contractors.
   Now TfL run the service things have got worse rather than better. Just before Christmas seven workers, including two Unite reps, were suspended without reason.
   Despite having recently acquired new ships they were laid up over the festive season. This postponed a planned strike over pay.
   Unite’s General Secretary, Sharon Graham, demanded: “The suspension of our seven members, including two of our reps, needs to be rescinded immediately. We won’t allow TfL management to get away with ‘declaring war’ on Unite and its members. The full weight of the union will be mobilised in support of them,” accusing TfL of “a huge and unprovoked escalation.”
   Unite regional officer Onay Kasab deplored the fact that: “TfL continues to spend excessive sums on agency staff, while claiming it is in financial trouble – this is money that could go towards paying our 58 members a decent wage as the RPI rate of inflation soars to 7.1 per cent.”

Cleaners Fight Back

By New Worker correspondent

Transport union RMT is stepping up its campaign to secure justice for cleaners working on London Underground (LU). The cleaners are employed by private contractors ABM, the New York-based facilities manager that has a turnover of $6.4 billion from its 140,000 employees. The cleaners have been fighting for parity with directly employed LU workers on a number of fronts including pensions, sick pay and travel. RMT argues that ABM cleaners are being discriminated against when compared with their colleagues. In particular it deplores the inaction of the Labour Mayor of London on the issue.

Speaking at the launch of a strike ballot that opened on Monday, RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: “It is a disgrace that over two thousand staff who clean London Underground’s trains and stations are treated as second-class citizens in their own workplace. We intend to right that wrong. This large group of staff, employed by the contractors ABM, clean up the human waste, vomit and other detritus and are instrumental in keeping London moving. They do some of the dirtiest jobs round the clock right across the tube network, and without their rapid response and continuing efforts services would be seriously compromised. They should not be subject to this outrageous workplace discrimination. It’s about time Sadiq Khan and LU called their contractors to account. We are calling on Londoners to back their tube cleaners’ fight for justice and as the ballot gets underway we remain available for serious and genuine talks.”

When the five year contract was awarded in 2017 Transport for London piously said it would ensure that cleaners would receive the London Living Wage and would end sub-contracting. An ABM advertisement for one of these jobs seen on the same day as the ballot opened offered precisely that. A full-time night-shift 10pm–5:30am was at the London Living Wage of £10.55 per hour but made no mention of being pensionable.

Also in London, an almost identical strike is underway at St Mary’s Hospital, part of the Imperial College NHS Trust in Paddington, where Alexander Fleming discovered the properties of penicillin; this time organised by the non-TUC union United Voices of the World (UVW). Two hundred cleaners, porters and caterers held the first of a series of strikes on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. The outsourced workers are demanding better pay and working conditions from Sodexo, a French multinational that has many such contracts in Britain.

 The workers are paid an hourly rate of £8.21 and even less for those under 25-years-old. This is up to £10,000 less per year than staff of equivalent grade under the NHS Agenda for Change, so the even London Living Wage is a distant dream. Obviously the bosses cannot afford to pay it because profits slumped nine per cent to $745.8 million last year. Sodexo claims it has already agreed to pay the London living wage from April and remained open to “negotiation and arbitration”.

Because workers only have the bare minimum Statutory Sick Pay they have to work on wards when ill, sometimes with flu, because they cannot afford to take time off when sick. They are campaigning for better changing facilities as well as for an end to discrimination that bans outsourced staff using NHS canteens and staff-rooms. As an additional insult, workers are forced to change in mice-ridden, dimly lit and mixed-gender changing rooms located in the hospital’s basement. One striking cleaner said: “I work 55 hours a week just to cover my rent. St Mary’s is my home, I spend more time here than in my house. Yet I am treated like a dog and made to feel like dirt.”

Petros Elia, an organiser for the UVW street union, says: “Sodexo’s contract with Imperial allowed its former CEO, Michel Landel, to enjoy obscene executive pay totalling nearly a million pounds a year and annual bonuses of up to 200 per cent of his salary. Sodexo and St Mary’s can afford to pay our workers in line with NHS rates and we urge them to do so, otherwise the strikes will continue indefinitely.”

At the same time, UVW are fighting similar battles across London. At Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and St James’s Park, the Royal Parks in central London, park attendants are going on strike at Halloween. Cleaners at the Channel 4 offices on Gray’s Inn Road will be also on strike.

In 2016, the now 3,000-strong union organised the largest cleaners strike in UK history and became the first trade union to force a UK university [the London School of Economics (LSE)] to bring the entirety of its outsourced cleaners in-house. It also organised one of the longest strikes in the history of the City of London, lasting 61 consecutive days. UVW also represents workers in the legal sector, charity sector, cultural sector, architectural sector and even sex workers. Let us hope the results in 2019 are the same as in 2016.

On track with the RMT

 Down the Tube

 

By New Worker correspondent

The RMT is stepping up preparations for ballots for strike action by its 10,000 London Underground members after the tube union accused London Underground bosses of stringing staff along and playing fast and loose after eight days of pay talks failed to secure any kind of meaningful offer out of the management side.

The union is both angry and frustrated at what it sees as blatant delaying tactics. General Secretary Mick Cash warned: “Our negotiators are angry and frustrated at what they see as blatant delaying tactics by London Underground throughout eight rounds of pay talks. RMT is not in the business of being strung along by anyone and the company should wake up, recognise how angry staff are becoming at this cavalier attitude from their top brass and come up with an offer that meets our expectations.”

Death by Contracting Out

By New Worker correspondent

The same union (RMT) has demanded an absolute ban on contracting out and an end to the cuts culture on the railways, along with the replacement of the Office of Rail and Road, a non-ministerial Government Department, with a genuinely independent safety regulator, after the death of a track worker death at Purley, near Croydon.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) report criticised “Victorian” methods of protection and the fatigue amongst zero-hours contract staff. RAIB’s report revealed the man was on a zero-hours contract. He was on his own because another worker failed to turn up, and was “probably fatigued and possibly distracted by personal and financial issues”, thus concluding that “the terms of his employment was an ‘underlying factor’ in the incident”.

The Chief Inspector of Rail Accidents continued: “When workers are employed on a casual basis on zero-hours contracts, there can be great pressure for them to try and juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet.

"We are therefore recommending that the railway industry reviews the way it manages the use of staff on zero-hours contracts, to minimise the risk associated with this pattern of work.”

He added: “I believe that the industry should continue to explore ways of eliminating the need for Victorian methods of protection on the twenty-first century railway.”

The RAIB recommended that Network Rail should ensure its labour suppliers improve the way they manage the risks associated with such contracts, particularly lifestyle and fatigue. Network Rail merely said it will “review our standards and our supplier practices”.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash was more specific: “Warning after warning from this trade union on fatigue, zero-hours and casualisation has not been properly addressed by Network Rail or the safety regulator the ORR. As a result, lives are at a risk and that is a scandal. For all the talk of a modern, digital railway those in charge can't even guarantee basic levels of safety for track records.

“If those responsible for protecting the safety of rail workers are not doing their job then we need a genuinely independent safety inspectorate with real teeth not linked to budget controls and the cosy world of the industry players which is the reality of the failed ORR model.”

Going Down the Tube

By New Worker correspondent

London Underground (LU) workers belonging to the transport union RMT have voted by 9–1 in favour of three days of strike action in opposition to safety-critical cuts. The strike, scheduled for 17–20 May, involves over a thousand key LU maintenance and engineering staff who are opposing the drastic cutting of train preparation and inspection schedules, which RMT warns will have a devastating impact on both service reliability and public safety.

The planned action will also include the tube fleet maintenance teams who are imposing a ban on lone working, and a ban on working without valid licences and fire wardens being in place.

Earlier this year RMT warned LU of the problems over its intentions to extend the fleet train preparation schedules. London Underground refused to consult with RMT or to provide the union with full information on all safety aspects.

The union warns that what LU proposes will devastate inspection frequencies beyond all recognition. This will inevitably lead to more train failures in service, putting unacceptable pressure on members and leaving passengers at risk.

Mick Cash, RMT General Secretary, said: “The nine to one ballot result showed just how angry tube staff are at proposals London Underground are attempting to bulldoze through that would decimate the inspection and safety culture on the fleet. Despite that result tube bosses have ignored the workforce and are pressing ahead and it is that intransigence that has left us no option but to confirm industrial action today.”