Hurrah for the RMT

London tubeworkers are threatening to go on strike tomorrow evening.

First up, I live in London. If there’s no tubes running, it will have a direct impact on my evening. (Just to make that clear.)

But there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to line up with the predictable furore about “greedy unions” and “£30,000 a year” and “35-hour weeks” and all the rest of it. Nor can I stand the equally tiresome claims that yes, of course we support the right to strike… but not at New Year! Heaven forbid that this right should ever be exercised.

This strike’s not about money, or some perverse desire to “spoil a great night out” on the union’s part. It’s about Transport for London wanting to break arrangements it had previously made over rostering. The RMT claims this will reduce safety on the tube.

Now, as a reasonably regular tube passenger, I’d place the drivers and station staff of the RMT in a better position to make judgements about my safety than employers prepared to contract out repair work to notorious cowboys like Jarvis. If a strike’s necessary to defend my safety on the tube, so be it.

There’s a wider issue, however. Tube drivers are better-paid than others because they have a strong, well-organised union. Breaking that union won’t suddenly mean, say, nurses getting paid more; quite the opposite.

Weakening the most powerful and best-organised elements of the working class makes grinding away at the rest of the workforce so much easier. The only way lower-paid workers will improve their lot is through organisation. Anything that undermines their attempts at organisation weakens their ability to win better pay and conditions.

Historically, unionisation amongst lower-paid and previously unorganised workers has tended to follow the better-organised and better-paid workers. Successful strikes provide an excellent example for others; moreover, the support of the better-organised can be vital in defending the weaker sections – the solidarity between baggage handlers and food-packers in the recent Gate Gourmet dispute was an excellent example of this.

With that in mind, I wish a happy new year to Bob Crow and the RMT. I hope many more will follow their lead over the coming 12 months.

9 comments
  1. Phil E said:

    I agree with everything you’ve said, and I think it needs saying. At the same time, I do think a NYE strike is a serious tactical error, which lends more support to the view you criticise – that a union like the RMT is just an organised wing of hte aristocracy of labour, looking after its own privileges. If it’s what they do I’ll support them in doing it, though.

  2. Jarndyce said:

    I do think a NYE strike is a serious tactical error

    While I broadly agree with (most of) the post, I’d second that quote from Phil bigtime. They’ve chosen to disrupt a night out enjoyed by most ordinary Londoners (and which brings money disproportionately to small businesses) rather than, say, the big return to work on Tuesday which would have hit big business and capital interests. It doesn’t smack of solidarity with anyone but themselves.

  3. “Tube drivers are better-paid than others because they have a strong, well-organised union. Breaking that union won’t suddenly mean, say, nurses getting paid more; quite the opposite.”

    Tripe. Average wages within an economy are set by average productivity. The distribution of wages (which, note, has nothing to do with returns to capital) depends upon the relative power of the various workers groups. A stronger group takes from the weaker. Note, it’s a zero sum game. The total amount of wagesis set by the average productivity.

    Quite apart from hte fact that if the tube drivers get less than ticket prices go down. That’s an increase in income for those nurses that use the system isn’t it?

  4. Pingback: Tim Worstall

  5. dsquared said:

    The total amount of wages is set by the average productivity.

    No it ain’t; the rate of profit has to be in there too. Productivity has been rising in the USA for ages but real wages haven’t.

  6. Meaders said:

    Dsquared seconded, and throw the massive real wage increases in the UK, 1970-74 – quite distinct from any changes to productivity – aligned with compression of differentials and falling income inequality.

    Quite apart from hte fact that if the tube drivers get less than ticket prices go down. That’s an increase in income for those nurses that use the system isn’t it?

    Hahahahahahah! Yeah, in a massively subsidised public transport system run by a rent-seeking public bureaucracy and facing highly inelastic demand, of course reductions in tube drivers wages will lead to reductions in ticket prices. But of course.

  7. But let’s say that Tim is right.

    That would mean that it is in our interests to reduce the incomes of the wealthy. We need not use rhetoric of equality or democracy to justify this reduction, but merely a recognition that this reduction is in our own (provided that we are not part of the wealthy) economic interests. This realised, no one could use to slimeball ‘politics of envy’ rhetorical dodge to avoid answering these demands.

  8. Shuggy said:

    Tripe. Average wages within an economy are set by average productivity. The distribution of wages (which, note, has nothing to do with returns to capital) depends upon the relative power of the various workers groups. A stronger group takes from the weaker. Note, it’s a zero sum game. The total amount of wagesis set by the average productivity.

    No, this doesn’t make any sense: either powerful interests can exploit their advantage in the market or they can’t. Your acceptance of a ‘zero-sum’ game would suggest you accept the former, which makes your notion of market rationality, with each worker being rewarded according to their labour, more difficult to understand. None of you have adressed Meaders’ basic point, which is that trades unions have been in a general sense, and at their best, a civilising institution in this country.

  9. Nataly said:

    NY first… London second…
    It was real hell in NY when the drivers went on strike. Everybody had to buy Christmas presents online.