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I wrote this article for Labour Briefing:

On International Working Women’s Day, set up over 100 years ago by socialist women in the workers’ movement to fight for our rights, RMT launched our model policy for transport employers about domestic violence.

Two years ago, the union's Women's Conference passed a policy rightly deploring cuts to women’s refuges. But as a trade union, we also have a responsibility to identify the workplace implications of domestic violence, and to press this issue through our collective bargaining with employers.

Labourstart are holding a fund raiser at the Bread and Roses pub in Clapham on Saturday May 4th to celebrate International Workers day
Memebers of the J33 campaign will be guest speakers
Live music, rap artists, beer and good comrades in Londons only union run pub

Please come and support us
Labourstart hosted the online petition for the J33 campaign that received over 3500 signatories
Please download and display the attached pdf file around your workplace

Justice for the 33 campaign. Sack the agency not the workers.
Please come and support the 33 RMT members who worked for over 5 years on LUL but have now been dropped by after being promised permanent jobs
Demonstration on 15th April 2013 0800-1000 Windsor Hse, Victoria St;

You can also help by signing the online the petition at;

http://www.rmtlondoncalling.org.uk/node/3898

Please download attached file for display at your workplace

Come to your branch and help with the decision to ballot all LUL members to get all ofthe 33 back to work.
Just before Christmas 2012, 33 RMT members on the north end of the Bakerloo Line were sacked by LUL. Many of them worked for LUL for over 5 years, only to be told they had failed the entrance tests for full time work.
This broke an agreement with the RMT.
The 33 were sacked due to LUL ending theircontract a year early.
It was agreed that the 33 would be migrated into LUL.
It is also clear LUL have colluded with the agencies to rob staff of over £1500.00 each in back pay.

Wednesday 3rd APRIL 2013: 1600hrs
The Bread and Roses Pub, nearest tube Clapham North

This is the speech I gave at RMT Women's Conference in launching the union's model Domestic Violence policy:

Today is International Women’s Day. Actually, it’s International Working Women’s Day, set up over 100 years ago by socialist women in the workers’ movement to fight for our rights.

RMT has chosen today to launch our model policy for transport employers about domestic violence.

RMT Stations Functional Council (SFC) reps have become aware that some L1 Reps on at least two lines have been asked to attend meetings with local and line managers to discuss LU's plans for the future organisation of station staffing.

There has been no formal consultation at any level over this issue and it is a clear breech of our agreed machinery of negotiation for LU to take the matter staright to L1.

Used refused and abused,
Now re-abused.

It is disingenuous of London Underground to suggest that the assessments our 33 members were expected to take part in were fair and above board.
The feeling amongst the 33 RMT members is that they were never going to be given a fair crack of the whip on these assessments. What they saw with their own eyes certainly never gave them any confidence they were being treated fairly.

The Bethnal Green tube shelter disaster turned out to be the worst civilian disaster of World War 2, yet very few people know about it.

The Central line had not reached further East than Liverpool Street when the 2nd World war broke out, so work on the unfinished Bethnal Green underground station stopped. It was a natural place for East Londoners to shelter in safety from the bombs, particularly during the Blitz. There was no track and no trains could run through it, so it could accommodate up to 10,000 people sleeping on the platforms, in the tunnels and in the pit where the track would normally have been. Unlike the present 3 entrance/exits to the station there was only one entrance to the shelter during the war. You went through a narrow doorway that opened out straight onto the rough, wide steps, that were open to the elements so there could be no light to show the way down otherwise enemy planes would have seen it.

On 19 December 2012 London Underground sacked 33 agency workers who had been employed on LUL contracts for the past 5 years. They were denied applying for jobs that were available on LUL despite the agency workers regs expressly forbidding this.