Censored! Company Bans Freedom of Expression at Finsbury Park

In a pathetic display of petulance, management on the Finsbury Park Group have ripped down two important notices from RMT notice cases. Apparently acting on instructions from no less than the company’s Employee Relations Manager, Gerry Duffy, management tore down the October issue of Monthly News and banned its circulation to staff on the group on 23rd October. Then, on the 26th, they removed from notice cases a report by local Reps of a Level 1 meeting held with management that same day.

Bakerloo Branch AGM Poster

The Bakerloo AGM is on Thursday December 3rd at 16:00 hours. Elections will take place for all officers and reps. Speakers include Bob Crow and Janine Booth

Following the AGM there will be a social with a limited free bar.

Please click on the link to download the poster.

CWU On Interim Agreement with Royal Mail

The Communication Workers Union's postal worker members were due to go on strike again today. However an interim agreement, announced last week, was reached between CWU and Royal Mail to postpone action. This video from www.cwutv.org explains the detail of the agreement.

David Ward, The Deputy General Secretary of CWU comments "There is no doubt that the strength of support from postal workers in the strikes has made Royal Mail think again. They have made significant concessions this week that are clear for everybody to see. Those concessions have allowed us to suspend strike action and work towards a full and final agreement."

Operations Strategic Plan

Your Stations and revenue reps discovered back in June 2009 that LU planned to keep at least 150 vacancies on all groups in an attempt to drive down its staffing costs. Your functional reps challenged this new policy of reducing staffing levels and the lack of any consultation over its strategy and referred the issue to an ad-hoc directors meeting which was ‘swiftly’ arranged some 3 months later!

Talking About Pay at ACAS

Olly Brian and Paul at ACASRMT and London Underground are discussing pay at ACAS today.

RMT hopes that London Underground management take this opportunity to increase their insulting-low pay offer. Your union will ballot members for strike action should LUL's pay offer not give you a decent rise.

Check back to this website for news of what happens at the talks.

RMT Changes Rule - Shorter Qualifying Time for AGM Delegates

Under RMT's rule book, a member could only stand for election as a delegate to the union's Annual General Meeting (AGM) once s/he had been a member for five years. Many union branches felt that this rule was unfair and out-of-date, and submitted a proposal to last Friday's Special Meeting to reduce the qualifying period to three years.

I am pleased to report that, following a lively debate and a close vote, the proposal was passed. Printed below is the speech I made in proposing the rule change, which outlines the reasons and arguments behind the change.

=====

Sign This Petition Against Uganda Death Penalty for Homosexuality

LGBT ugagnda protestPlease see below a petition for our Ugandan brothers and sisters and against the 'Anti-Homosexuality Bill'.

A draft of the "Anti-Homosexuality Bill" was introduced by Ndorwa West MP, David Bahati on October 14, 2009.

Paragraph 3 of the draft bill sets out provisions on what it names as "aggravated homosexuality," which will incur the death penalty, contradicting the global trend toward a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Training for RMT Reps

GENERAL REPRESENTATIVES TRAINING 2010 - EDUCATION, ORGANISATION & AGITATION National Education Centre, Doncaster

Bob Crow writes ...

I have arranged a series of training courses for our elected representatives that will be held throughout the first quarter of 2010.

The courses are for our reps who have never attended a five day RMT residential before.

Our ‘General Reps Course’ focuses on the role of an RMT rep and cover all the basics including recruitment & retention, providing advocacy at disciplinary and grievance hearings and negotiation.