OUR WORK MAT TERS

Thisunion is keenly aware that the use of agency work and the gig economy is growing on London Underground and across the entire rail network.

RMT members who work in track protection for London Underground are calling on the London Mayor to take action to address their pay and conditions as well as their employment status.

These workers are agency workers but are wrongly described as self-employed but their employment status is a fiction.

These are not isolated incidents as more and more employers seek to remove permanent workers and engage supposedly ‘self-employed’ workers who are denied sick pay, holiday or pensions and live in a state of constant precariousness.

This growing use of agency work comes on top of the continued outsourcing of renewals work. RMT has exposed that contracts with construction giants mean that Network Rail’s supply chain is riddled with casualisation, bogus selfemployment and the use of payroll companies.

This is the model that employers have for transport workers, and it is connected to the national rail dispute. Over 20,000 RMT members took strike action earlier this month in the dispute on jobs, pay and conditions across the train operating companies.

Members have displayed a magnificent show of solidarity and commitment to the dispute and it has been that steadfastness which has stopped the companies and the government from driving on with the imposition of cuts and changes to conditions.

RMT is also campaigning to get outsourced cleaning grades back in-house. The union is putting pressure on the London Mayor to deliver on his pledge to review his cleaning contract with ABM with a view to in-sourcing these workers.

It is time for the mayor to show real leadership and bring in-house more than 2,000 tube cleaners and who are currently outsourced to the US company ABM.

RMT is also calling on the Scottish government to end the current ferry chaos in Scotland and commit to keeping CalMac Ferry services in permanent public ownership when the current contract ends next year.

Time and again we see the private sector failing to deliver in transport on ferries, buses or in rail. In fact, following the government taking the shambolic Transpennine Express franchise into public ownership, last month, private transport companies now run less of the rail network than at any point since privatisation in 1993.

In response this union is stepping up its campaign to rebuild an integrated, directly employed and fairly paid workforce for all transport and energy sectors.

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