BuT tHe PuBlIc DoNt SuPpOrT tHe StRiKeS

what a load of shit

ROGER TAYLOR in Japan, 1979.

Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has been in the media all day talking about the rail strikes and god what a great spokesperson he has been for them.

Here he is handling some ridiculous line of questioning from Kay Burley who is trying to suggest the union will be encouraging violence on the picket lines and referencing the 1980’s miners strikes, which is pretty absurd for a whole host of reasons:

Here he is calling Chris Philp, a Tory MP and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport a liar approximately 900 times for spouting nonsense on Newsnight (I can only post one vid so these will be links)

Here he is telling Richard Madeley he’s talking “twaddle” for asking him if he’s a Marxist, which tbh I think was polite because imo Richard Madeley is just a c u n t xx

And if you’ve any uncertainty as to why rail workers are striking, these two clips will be a good place to start

Yaroslav Bayarunas in role of Raistling Majere from "The Last Trial"

This is brilliant news and a reminder that unions still have relevance and power, whatever right-wing and liberal politicians might try to tell you. It's also a testament to all those ordinary people who supported the RMT's campaign by writing, sending emails, filling in surveys and consultations, calling and generally making a pain in the backside of themselves to politicians and rail companies. Don't underestimate the strength of ordinary people in numbers!

Ever see a man so pretty?

Union action leads to 10% pay increase and job wins on rails and busses

Don't let them tell you that being in a union achieves nothing. Don't let them tell you industrial action never works.

The Landworkers’ Alliance wishes to send a message of solidarity to the 40,000 members of the Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport (RMT) taking strike action today.

The workers taking this action include guards, signallers, maintenance and catering staff who are striking against a multipronged attack on their working conditions by Network Rail and the 14 Train Operating Companies. These including proposed £2bn of cuts to the rail system which will result in 2,500 fewer maintenance staff and 625,000 fewer hours of maintenance, the closure of 1,000 ticket offices, and an 8% pay rise over two years at a time when the RPI rate of inflation is already running at 11.4%. The RMT is striking against policies that threaten to make the railways less safe and less viable as a system of transport, when the extreme heatwaves of last week have foregrounded the necessity of transitioning to a transport system based on public provision rather than private vehicles.

This comes as likely Prime Minister-to-be Liz Truss pledges to restrict the fundamental right of rail workers to strike, and the introduction of new legislation that will allow companies to hire agency workers to replace strikers. These proposals will make it harder for everyone to defend themselves from companies who care more about their rates of profit than their workers and the people using their service.

These cuts also come shortly after the Train Operating Companies turned a £600m profit. In 2020, the Rolling Stock Companies, who own the trains, paid out almost £1bn in dividends to their shareholders. We recognise the similarities between the relationship that the Train Operating Companies have with the rail system and its workforce to the relationship that industrial agribusiness has with the food system. It is an extractive relationship that seeks to take as much value out of the system as possible, with little care for the damage that this practice does to the railways and the people that work them.

As a union of landworkers, peasants and small farmers, we try to place ourselves in the traditions of the wider labour movement. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, who were famously deported to Australia in 1834 for breaking the Combination Laws that prevented workers from forming trade unions, were agricultural workers themselves. We also recognise the essential role that the fight for better wages and working conditions plays in the struggle for a better food system. For too long cheap, mass- produced food has been used by successive government as an alternative to social policies that would increase incomes for working people. Only through the maintenance of an industrial food system, whose true costs of environmental destruction and superexploitation of agricultural workers are not reflected in their price at the supermarket, can a system that continually seeks to reduce wages sustain itself.

"Public transport must be for all the public.

Everyone must have the right to turn up and go, and we must maintain a fully staffed railway.

#StaffOurStations"

Labour MP Zarah Sultana has blasted the Tory party’s “disgraceful” anti-trans, anti-refugee and anti-worker rhetoric in an impassioned speech to parliament.

Speaking on Wednesday (22 June) in support of the UK-wide rail strikes, Sultana explained that these policies are linked in their “attempt to divide our communities, and distract us from its failure to serve the British people”.

Sultana, 28, explained that she had attended a demonstration against the government’s Rwanda deportation policy just after hearing the debate on trans conversion therapy last Monday (13 June).

“The Rwanda policy, which has nothing to do with tackling people smuggling and everything to do with whipping up hate, demonising marginalised groups and pitting people who were born here against people who seek asylum here,” she said in a video posted to Twitter.

She added: “It’s also what the refusal to ban trans conversion therapy is about, letting abusive practices against trans people go unpunished in order to pit cis women against trans women.

“It’s also what the demonisation of railway workers and RMT is all about… vilifying workers who are standing up for their jobs, for their pay and for their conditions, and pitting those railway workers against other workers.

“It’s all an attempt to distract and divide our time with this government is overseeing the cost of living emergency and a growing poverty crisis across the country.

“The problem isn’t railroad workers. It’s not refugees, and it’s not trans women. The problem is this Tory government and the billionaires that back them.”