Bob Crow writes ...

RMT is among many unions and other organisations supporting a major national demonstration to defend the welfare state and public services, initiated by the National Pensioners’ Convention.

The march will assemble from midday at Temple Place on London’s Embankment on Saturday April 10, with the rally beginning at 2pm in Trafalgar Square.

With a general election likely to take place soon after, this is an opportunity to speak out in favour of defending the National Health Service, improving pensions and defending public services against cuts.

RAIL UNION RMT will today (Wednesday 27th January) hand a dossier of safety failures and maintenance cuts to MP’s as rail workers lobby parliament this lunchtime in protest at plans by Network Rail to axe a further 1500 safety-critical jobs.

Hundreds of rail workers have contacted a confidential RMT email line to say lives could be put at risk. The dossier highlights the worst examples of where the scaling back of work and changing standards in preparation for the job cuts are already leading to a serious deterioration in safety.

Tube Lines, whose late completion of upgrade work on the Jubilee Line has resulted in numerous weekend closures, has had a claim for £327m in compensation to complete the work rejected by an independent adjudicator. Tube Lines attempted to claim the money from London Underground. It felt LU was to blame for the work not being completed on time as access to the track was not sufficient.

RAIL UNION RMT today slammed the government for “presiding over a culture of private waste” on the railways after new figures obtained by RMT parliamentary convenor John McDonnell revealed that the cost of designing and tendering rail franchises since 2003 is a staggering £75 million.

The Regional Council Executive endorsed this resolution on behalf of the Regional Council at its meeting on 9 February 2010.

This Regional Council has been informed that Diane Abbot MP supported the former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s policy to privatise the East London Line. Also she did not sign the Early Day Motion regarding the issue.

If this is true then Ms Abbot has broken the policy of this union and the principles of our Parliamentary Group.

I've written the following article for 'Solidarity' newspaper ...

A decision by the PPP Arbiter in December may prove to be a fatal punch to private infrastructure company Tube Lines and the whole ‘Public-Private Partnership’ set-up on London Underground.

The New Labour government imposed the PPP at the very end of 2002, despite widespread opposition. PPP organised the Underground’s infrastructure into three groups of lines, and transferred them to private consortia known as Infracos, two to now-defunct Metronet, one – the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines – to Tube Lines.

photo by Paul Mattsson

TUBE UNION RMT today called for PPP contractor Tube Lines to be stripped of their contract with immediate effect and without compensation, and their work brought back under direct public control, as it emerged that their operations on the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee Lines have collapsed into chaos and recrimination.

RMT have no doubt that the poisoned relationship between TfL and Tube Lines has now broken down irretrievably with a sequence of events in the run up to Thursdays decision by the arbiter on the value of the next phase of their contract fuelling the case for the company to be dumped.

RAIL UNION RMT today demanded an end to the “chaos, instability and waste” of rail privatisation following the government’s announcement this morning that National Express will have their East Anglia franchise terminated in 2011.

RMT are calling on the government to strip National Express of their remaining C2C contract and to make it clear that the company are being kicked off the UK rail tracks for good following the shambolic collapse of their East Coast Main Line operation.

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary, said:

Tube andTfL union RMT will be holding a demonstration in support of London Underground cleaners fight against privatisation this Wednesday (18 November) as it emerged that senior TfL bosses have received a 50% increase in bonus payments over the past two years from £3.6 million in 2007 to £5.3 million this year.

The tube cleaners, who are also fighting for TfL Chair Boris Johnson’s London Living Wage, will be outside the former Metronet headquarters at Templar House, 81-87 High Holborn at 12 noon on Wednesday 18th November.

RAIL UNION RMT today called on the government to take back the London Midland rail franchise from the parent Govia group after the company was hit with a remedial notice for persistent poor performance and failure to deliver an acceptable quality of service.

The RMT demand for renationalisation of London Midland comes just days before the East Coast Main Line is due to be taken back into public ownership and with the government coming under massive pressure to seize back the keys on National Express’s two other franchises – C2C and East Anglia.

The Communication Workers Union's postal worker members were due to go on strike again today. However an interim agreement, announced last week, was reached between CWU and Royal Mail to postpone action. This video from www.cwutv.org explains the detail of the agreement.

David Ward, The Deputy General Secretary of CWU comments "There is no doubt that the strength of support from postal workers in the strikes has made Royal Mail think again. They have made significant concessions this week that are clear for everybody to see. Those concessions have allowed us to suspend strike action and work towards a full and final agreement."

It seems as though a sensible decision has been made, as it was announced this week that Metronet will remain under the management of LUL. It's recent transition to LUL had been on a temporary basis but will now be ongoing. The Department for Transport has a press release on this issue:

Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis and Mayor of London Boris Johnson today confirmed that the tube improvement contracts inherited by Transport for London (TFL) on an interim basis after Metronet’s collapse will remain permanently under the direct management of London Underground Ltd (LUL).

THE COMBINATION of private-sector greed and £5 billion in transport cuts planned by London’s mayor threaten to derail the Tube upgrades that are essential to the capital’s economic future, the network’s biggest union said today.

Responding to a London First study that underlines the importance of maintaining Tube investment, RMT warned that delays and overruns in upgrades and cancellation of some plans would be worsened by the savage cuts planned by Mayor Johnson.