By an ASLEF member The calling off of the strike on London Underground was a timid climbdown. Almost all of the 800 redundancies will go ahead (80 of them will be drivers probably half of them ASLEF members). LUL said that the additional 200 job cuts were not seriously proposed anyway.
Management's reason' for the cuts was that automatic tickot harrior had reduced the need for staff, and that reduction in use of the underground had enabled them to take rolling stock out of use for renovation. ¡he ractichirina invo ves noth job losses, and loss of earnings or workers displaced, albeit temporarily, from their normal The net result is fewer workers covering the same amount of work - a long term management project. After the successful strike ballot, the decision of the RMT leadership to call of the trike in return for a few vagur concessions, had the LUL management laughing.
Their divide and rule tactics June 8, 1991 No. 3 have paid off - the union leaderships and activists are at one another's throats. his is a throwback to the 1982 strikes, when ASLEF members crossed NUR picket lines, NUk members crossed ASLEF lines, and TSSA members crossed both.
The bitterness caused by that was only partly overcome by the 1989 train crew strikes - which were organised by mass, open meetings of the rank and file. It is not ASLEF's craft nature which upsets the RMT bureaucrats but their recruitment of guards and shunters previously organised by RMT.
RMT is little better than ASLEF despite its claim to be an industrial union. It is just as prone to poaching as ASLEF.
If a united, industrial railworkare union comac about it will not be through a recruitment war, or through telling ASLEF workers they must sacrifice themselves for lower-paid and lower well-organised WOrker It will come about through a united struggle over common issues- the last thing that either the RMT'sJimmy Knappor ASLEF's Derek Fullick want. management.
It is true that the ASLEF leadership played a destructive roll in the whole confrontation, but the answer cannot be just 'smash ASLEF. Too many assumptions were made in the previous article about what the ASLEF membership would have done in an initial one day official strike; not enough attenton was given to developing rank and file solidarity The fact is the end result of the issue was a big defeat for the unions and a victory for management, and if that is not recognised it is harder to regroup for another day. the demanding design requirements o the labour movement. Siren Sisters Road. London N7 1A. Design * Layout * Typesetting Words and Pictures is a new company set up to cater specially for Leaflets, poster, magazines. papers - ou rame t. we can do it! Phone us noil on pil iso 1250 or ierite to 284a-286a