RMT Rejects 'Hard Man' Boris Attack On Unions

Responding to Boris Johnson’s attack on trade unions this morning, RMT acting general secretary Mick Cash said:

“From Boris Johnson’s wholesale assault on the trade unions this morning it is crystal clear that he has sought to engineer and provoke a dispute on London Underground, by bulldozing through his cuts and closures programme, in order to use Londoners as pawns in his personal crusade for the leadership of the Tory Party.

“Tube workers and Londoners will be furious when they find out that the veil has now slipped. The attack on trade unions and public services that has brought London to a standstill has been clearly set up so that Boris Johnson can posture as the hard man of the Tory right and the heir to Thatcher in order to fulfill his own ambitions and to fuel his personal war with David Cameron.

“It is equally scandalous that hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money has been spent by TFL promoting a politically-motivated cuts and austerity agenda for London that would decimate safety and reduce tube stations to a criminals' paradise. The posturing by the Mayor and his officials at London Underground and TFL must stop and talks based on RMT’s proposed solution to the dispute must be reconvened.”