An RMT member at Alstom writes ...

Alstom is a multinational engineering company that was invited to supply and then maintain trains on the London Underground Northern and Jubilee Lines under that last Tory government. They were the first private company in the underground and may be the last one. Conditions in Alstom have declined massively in the past year, with the employer using severe disciplinary methods against staff for increasingly minor offences.

Workers for Alstom on both lines have been forced to take action after the company responded to Tory transport cuts by trying to keep wages down. Engineering workers at Alstom are facing a 2% pay deal that lags behind the 4.2% that they would have got under any of the other employers. RMT members returned a resounding vote for strike action and action short of a strike and on the 5th of September delivered 24 hours of solid strike action. Despite a the company's attempts to organise a scab operation by offering inexperienced managers and office staff double time, full Monday service was not achieved.

Alstom is still not back a negotiating table, but the workforce has proved that it can act and must do so again. In the meantime, people who want to support the Alstom workers need to get the word out to Northern and Jubilee Line drivers that Alstom took big risks using barely-prepared scabs to do train prepping.