May 2022
REGIONAL NEWSLETTER
Issue 2
CONTACT US: Your North East Regional Council can be contacted at N69a2e@rmt.org.uk
North East Region THE NORTH EAST VOTES YES TO STRIKE ACTION The results are in for the national ballot and it’s a resounding YES! Members in our region have shown they have had enough of the disingenuous statements from bosses around pay. We will not accept an erosion of our terms and conditions or any attacks on our jobs, and we will fight against the real-term pay cut being forced upon us. 40,000 RMT members were balloted nationwide, comprising workers from Network Rail and 15 train operating companies. We have shown we are determined to keep defending rail jobs, pay and conditions and keep the railway safe and reliable. Any attacks on frontline workers create an unsafe railway, be it on trains, on track, or in stations. It’s a false economy. The media attacks on our loyal and hardworking members will now be ramped up: expect to be demonised by so-called experts citing “what about the nurses?”. A valid question; they deserve a pay rise in line with inflation just as much as we do. We at RMT are the union that will bust this attack on workers who were rightly hailed as heroes during the pandemic, and if we win this fight other sectors will follow. It is not a race to the bottom. We achieve so much as we are a fighting trade union – we are only as strong as our members, and these members have shown we have had enough. We are rightfully angry because we have record numbers of people in poverty despite being in work; we are suffering through a low-paid economy due to unions being smashed in this country. Workers deserve a fair slice of the pie as the wealth is created by those workers. Your democratically elected executive committee are not 'union barons' or 'militants' – they are lay workers expressing the members’ voices. They will decide on our strategy going forward based on what YOU the member have told them via this ballot. Keep fighting, keep believing: together we can win.
UNITY IS STRENGTH