The RMT must be derailed
The right to strike in the rail industry is now disproportionate and poses an unacceptable threat to prosperity, progress and proper effective management. This right to strike must therefore be curtailed by further trade union legislation.
During the coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting restrictions, the government saved the railway from imminent financial ruin. The jobs of RMT members were kept only by taxpayers’ money. Over £7 billion of other people’s money. It is morally objectionable on every level for the RMT to then belligerently reject negotiation and hold these same people, ordinary taxpayers (some of whom never use the railways), to effective ransom.
For the record, the demands of the unions are, in the words of comrade Lynch, “a decent pay rise, job security and no compulsory redundancies". And I want a unicorn. Nobody with any sense of decency would oppose people wanting to be fairly paid and feel reasonably secure in their jobs-especially in the current climate.
Nevertheless, in the specific context of UK railways, such remarks take people for fools. As sure as night follows day, overmanning and stagnation follow heavily unionised industries. The remedy to years of backward retrenchment? Efficiencies in one way or another.
Take just a few examples.
It is really somewhat quaint that ECS workings (unpublished train movements without any passengers), suburban and sleepy branch lines still have a guard and driver in the 21st century when proven, safe technology exists for automatic train operation (ATO), including for mainline express services. Are we to commit indefinitely to two-person operation on all trains?
Modern signalling over tens of square miles can be controlled from computer panels operated by just a few personnel in a centrally located location. Are we to reject capacity improvements, troubleshooting capability and efficiency?
Any sensible company, especially one with £54.6bn of debt, would think it prudent to cut costs where possible. Why the outrage then when Network Rail is reportedly considering cutting 2500 jobs? For the record, no formal proposals have been presented by Network Rail anyway. No safety concerns have been raised by the ORR, the rail regulator either.
To give a historical illustration, it is rather like protecting the horse and cart from the dawn of the railways. If that had happened, the RMT would be somewhat lacking, of course.
As that great wordsmith George Bernard Shaw shrewdly noted, “progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”. Touché.
How could any sector with a union that demanded indefinite stagnation in working practices, pay structures and commercial responsiveness ever be a success? In allowing the RMT’s Gulliver’s grip to tighten, we are idly standing by as a key component of our national infrastructure is strangled by outdated obstructionism and religious tunnel vision. Just at the height of passenger recovery, the RMT want to torpedo the bedrock on which their jobs ultimately depend.
The truth is union members can have the certainty they understandably want, and the Rail industry can be freed to progress. Setting a legally binding target of ATO operation of 90% of services by (say) 2040 accompanied with a statutory requirement for all new trains to be built ATO-ready and a government fund to retro-fit the technology if feasible would allow TOCs and railway staff to plan future human resource need. Every reasonable opportunity to re-train displaced staff should be fully explored and offered. Indeed, conditions could be transformatively improved.
Gone forever would be politically motivated strike action. Management would be free to innovate, operating costs would drastically be reduced, the rail subsidy slashed, reliability boosted, and fares cut. In short, a non-political, commercially- that is, passenger- centred railway. How novel. It might even catch on.
That said, the RMT’s action stretches far beyond reasonable discussions over pay and conditions. Credit where credit’s due, Lynch seems to get the need for efficiencies, he just takes issue with it, “The government's hand is behind this. The companies are delivering government policy and like every public sector worker they want to clamp down on pay…The reason they want do that is they want to restore profit, [and] they want to boost dividends for the private operators and that is true right across the economy in my view.”
There we have it: a direct political challenge to free market economics and the democratically elected government.
Time to pose the Leninist question: what is to be done?
The government must honour the laudable words heard from transport ministers by introducing legislation making industrial action illegal unless a certain number of workers are present. To borrow a phrase that has seen considerable use in recent times, “no option should be off the table”, including further curbs on trade union power. This will be a struggle of wills, and for the sake of sane management, the economic recovery and the taxpayer, it is a struggle the government and rail companies must win.