Dear Colleague,

Following a barrage of relentless media attacks on RMT last week, much of which was based on distortions and downright lies, there are signs that our message is starting to get through.

In tonight’s Standard, the paper at the forefront of hostility to RMT, their columnist Simon Jenkins has written a piece titled “Blame Greedy Bosses For The Great Tube Mess”. While we would dispute much of Jenkins’ analysis, he has picked up on at least some of the messages that RMT has been pumping out.

On senior tube bosses pay:

“The attention of Transport for London managers (who run the trains) is likewise diverted from service reliability to struggling with contracts and thinking like lawyers. I imagine they must also spend time counting their earnings. TfL boss Peter Hendy can hardly go in to negotiate a meagre one per cent pay rise with his workers when he and his senior colleagues are claiming City-style bonuses of £50,000-£130,000 on top of quarter-million pound salaries, irrespective of the rotten performance they deliver the London public.

Livingstone and Johnson as mayors should never have allowed such payments. Hendy is now giving 123 of his own staff more than £100,000 a year. Such fat-cat salaries for running a railway not appreciably better than it was 20 years ago defy justification and can only inflame industrial relations and enrage passengers.”

On privatisation:

“The Tube is now in a desperate financial mess. Privatisation has led to soaring costs and plummeting financial viability, including the pseudo-bankruptcy two years ago of the company in charge of two-thirds of the lines, Metronet. This failure cost the state £1.7 billion in bailing out debt alone. The shortfall on capital works and repairs, which privatisation (insisted on by Gordon Brown) was meant to solve, has rocketed to a further £5 billion.

“The result is the future of the Tube lies not with a railway executive nor with an elected minister or mayor but with the so-called public-private partnership arbiter, Chris Bolt.”

On the Mayor:

“There is no point in the Mayor, Boris Johnson, insulting his Tube unions as "demented" and "piss-taking", let alone in dreaming up legally enforceable no-strike deals.”

RMT will continue to fight for a fair hearing on the issues at the heart of our disputes with LUL and TfL management. This week we will be exposing the safety risks resulting from £60 million of maintenance cuts on former Metronet and we will be taking our campaign on the continuing outrage over contract cleaners pay to the steps of City Hall.

I will, of course, keep you informed of all developments.

Yours sincerely,

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary