THIS IS CAPITALIST CLASS WAR!

The Tories don't bother preaching class war because they're far too busy practising it. 

They and the capitalist class they are part of have launched the most bitter assault on working-class people in living memory - as we persistently warned they would do, during the pandemic.

Inflation has reached the highest levels in at least 40 years. 

The global food price index is at the highest ever recorded. 

New official reports in Scotland confirm 20% inflation in the cost of supermarket shopping over the past 2 years. 

And the poorest Scottish people suffer far higher inflation than the richest: 10.2% already, compared with 8.7% for the wealthiest tenth of people. 

All the different schools of capitalist economists and their political echoes try to convince us that inflation is caused by rising wage demands. Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, who recently claimed under questioning at the Westminster Treasury Committee that he “can't remember” his salary of £575,000, lectured workers that “we do need to see restraint in wage bargaining”. 

The Tories perpetrate the same lie and do everything in their power to slash wages and neuter the collective strength of trade unionists in the defence of living standards. 

ASLEF members demonised and granted some concessions 

Class Hatred Towards Train Drivers 

We see their class hatred in response to the demands of a modest pay rise by train drivers in the face of inflation already at 9%, with forecasts of at least 14%. 

The full might of the media - broadsheet and tabloid alike - has been unleashed to demonise these workers. MPs, 200 of whom have second jobs that brought them in an additional £9million on top of their £84,000 salaries – use the media to denounce the drivers as overpaid, with utterly false and hypocritical sudden ‘concern’ for the comparative wages of nurses and teachers, dredged up to try and isolate and defeat ASLEF members. 

Of course, meantime not a word is muttered about giving inflation-matching pay rises to the very same NHS workers, after the hell they've lived through during the pandemic, with rampant burnout, early retirement, and a growing crisis in an underfunded, understaffed healthcare system. 

Defend the Right to Strike 

Faced with the power at the point of production held by London Underground workers and railway workers in general, and their critical role in the wider economy, the Tories have unleashed renewed threats of effectively banning the right to strike, with proposals to legislate ‘minimum service requirements’ on the railways (and other essential services) during any industrial action - which would effectively mean strikes were banned. 

On that issue the Tories did preach class warfare, but only in the hidden depths of the Tory election manifesto, as we exposed at the time; they now aim not just to preach class war on railway workers but also practise it. 

Like a second-rate echo chamber of Tory propaganda, SNP Education Minister Richard Lochhead has joined the shoddy chorus of demands that workers should restrict themselves to what he calls “sensible wage claims". 

Spreading Strikes 

A vast variety of workers are already taking action on pay as the skyrocketing cost of essentials like food, energy, transport and housing devours their real wages. 

FE College lecturers are striking for decent pay, with a claim for 5,000 staff which would only cost approximately £1.5million in total, whereas the combined salaries of 26 College Principals cost the public purse £2.7million. 

School teacher members of the EIS have overwhelmingly rejected a 2% pay offer by COSLA, as have hundreds of thousands of local authority workers, ranging from Social Care staff to cleansing workers and many others. 

RMT members in Network Rail and 15 Train Operating Companies have smashed the Tory anti-union barriers with a 71% turnout and an 89% majority for strike action, which would be the biggest such industrial showdown on the railways in 40 years. 

The sheer scale of this vote for action may well force some concessions from the employers, but anything short of inflation-proofed pay rises after 2 years of zero increases, alongside reversal of the planned loss of 2,500 Network Rail maintenance jobs, would be unacceptable. 

RMT members on ScotRail are voting for action after a derisory 2.2% pay offer, while the SNP/Scottish Green Party government try to square the circle, claiming credit for ‘nationalising' ScotRail on 1st April, then claiming “we are not in the room" when it comes to this pay dispute, whilst of course ScotRail is not only owned and funded by the Scottish government, but their (grossly overpaid) bosses have to get Cabinet permission for any pay rise above the same government's public sector pay cap. 

Royal Mail workers are balloting to protect their pay, and are about to be joined by fellow members of the Communication Workers Union in the BT Group. 

Countless groups of Unite the union members are likewise squaring up to the employers with demands on pay to catch up with inflation. 

Tories Battered into U-turn 

This rolling thunder of industrial fightback by hundreds of thousands of workers is what helped to terrify the Tories into a U-turn on a windfall tax on oil and gas companies, as they face fights on far too many fronts for their own liking. 

After months of stubbornly rejecting the notion of taxation of the grotesque super-profits of the energy giants, as their profiteering drives millions into fuel poverty, the Tories have conceded a temporary 25% tax on the profits of North Sea oil and gas companies, which they claim could raise up to £5billion. 

Whilst that figure dwarfs the pathetically weak windfall tax demands by the Labour leadership - which they themselves estimate would have raised £2billion - it still goes nowhere near matching the life-threatening hike to energy bills which have already been imposed, with an additional £800 increase forecast by Ofgem's chief executive for October. 

Whereas the universal £400 energy subsidy is a welcome, hard-won concession, it doesn't match even half the rise in bills. 

And in contrast to everything the Tories stand for, they've felt compelled to offer targeted (but totally inadequate) additional aid on mounting fuel bills, in a battle for electoral survival. To pensioners, a demographic with a higher than average propensity to vote; and to some of the most impoverished of the working class, to appease their rage in the so-called Redwall seats of northern England - former Labour fortresses recently conquered by the Tories. Classic ruling class tactics: limited reforms from above to prevent 'revolution' from below. 

Public Ownership of Energy 

And the windfall tax is tied to bountiful concessions to the Big Polluters, which threatens to not only subsidise their profits from taxpayers’ money but also vastly exacerbate the climate crisis. 

Shell, BP and the other fossil capitalists have been promised 91 pence back out of every £1 windfall tax provided they invest in energy production - with absolutely no precondition that such investment should be in clean, green renewable energy. 

It feeds into the renewed drive by Boris Johnson for increased fossil fuel production alongside a binge of nuclear power investment, neither of which offers any short-term answer to the energy crisis, and both of which only add to pollution and the threat to the lives of people and our planet. 

And the super-profitable electricity generating and supply companies and privatised National Grid are sheltered from the Tory windfall tax, which targets only oil and gas producers - leaving profiteering out of people's misery intact. 

Nothing short of public ownership of all forms of energy, democratically controlled and managed by elected boards comprising union representatives of energy workers, alongside representatives of the wider working class and governments, can begin to tackle the underlying energy crisis, cure poverty and pollution - all of which requires the planned production of clean, affordable green energy in a People's Energy Service. Made affordable by taking the profit out of it. And made clean by a worker-led transition to renewables. 

Tories party whilst thousands die in isolation 

Tories Can be Beaten! 

However, the £15billion package of concessions on the cost-of-living crisis, wrung out of the hands of Rishi Sunak against all the Tories’ ideology and inbuilt instincts, holds rich lessons for the wider struggles of working-class people. 

Despite their parliamentary majority the Tories are not invincible. They can be beaten. This is something like the 25th U-turn in their short period of office since December 2019. 

They are in crisis, as is the capitalist system they are part of, and can be driven back or even toppled. 

Public outrage at ‘partygate’ has laid siege to Boris Johnson's callous cabal, who arrogantly partied, quaffed alcohol to the point of vomiting all over 10 Downing Street and abusing cleaning staff, at a time when everyday people couldn't even say goodbye to dying relatives, at the height of the pandemic. 

Fury at the outrageous behaviour of this entitled, upper-class razor-gang, led by a serialised liar, has fused with rage at the rising cost of food and fuel, leading to a very significant upsurge in the readiness of workers to strike back through collective action. 

Coordinate the Strikes 

Instead of allowing employers and the government to isolate and pick off one section of workers at a time, national trade union leaders should urgently organise coordination of strike action, including the potential for a 1-day general strike, with common demands on wages, prices and job protection. 

The TUC’s ‘We Deserve Better’ national demonstration in London on June 18th is a welcome opportunity to rally the combined forces of the trade union movement. 

It cannot just be an exercise in going through the motions and letting off steam. Instead, it should be used as the launch-pad for systematic coordination of struggles, including strikes, across different sectors, to demand pay rises that at least match inflation; in round figures, at least 10% across the board. 

In doing so the TUC and individual national union leaderships need to take up the cudgels to bury the malicious myth that wage rises are what cause inflation. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Wages are lagging behind prices, and have been doing so for years. To illustrate the point, figures from the USA show that in the 20 years before Covid, corporations systematically suppressed wages, making labour's share of national wealth the lowest ever by 2019. 

Wages Don't Cause Inflation 

Real weekly wages only rose by 0.4% per annum, whereas annual growth in the national economy (GDP) was over 2% a year. In the period 2012-19, corporate America (excluding the financial companies) made $1trillion a year in profit; in contrast they made $1.7trillion profit last year alone. 

Corporate profit margins are at their highest since 1950 – increased by a median 49% in the last two years, whereas workers’ wages have only risen by 1.6%. The same pattern applies across the globe, including in this country. 

It's fattening profit margins which are causing inflation, not wage rises, which are failing to keep up with inflation. As the Economic Policy Institute sums it up, 54% of all price increases are due to increased profit margins, with labour costs only accounting for less than 8% of price rises. 

One more stark example: the big energy companies recently reported their profits had doubled in the last quarter, at the same time as most people's energy bills have doubled, as their real wages are collapsing, after over a decade of wage stagnation. 

Fattening profits fuel inflation, combined with the bottlenecks in supplies of certain goods because of snarl-ups in the logistics of shipping supplies across the oceans, which was previously hailed as the magic of globalisation, with its ‘just in time production’ slashing costs and turbocharging profits for global multinationals. 

The impact of Covid lockdowns, including port shutdowns, has thrown the globalisation ‘dream’ into chaos, creating supply chain bottlenecks and terrible costs to the working class worldwide, as scarcity of supplies pushes up prices. 

The crises of capitalism create inflation, not wage rises. 

Demand Price Controls 

The TUC London demo should also be used to demand price controls, as at least some governments did in the aftermath of a similar inflationary spiral caused by blockages of goods supplies in the aftermath of World War Two; to be monitored and implemented by Price Committees of workers and consumers. Cut prices and profits, not pay! 

Going beyond that, the trade union movement needs to crank up a serious campaign for democratic public ownership of key sectors like energy, transport, construction, food production and retail, to end the grotesque profiteering and horrendous escalation of food poverty, fuel poverty, substandard housing and social isolation. 

Trade unionists and socialists need to bombard the Scottish government and local authorities with demands for an emergency plan to retrofit every home free of charge, with insulation, draught proofing, new eco-friendly boilers and fast broadband – to slash energy consumption, fuel poverty, and create tens of thousands of skilled jobs into the bargain. 

The Scottish TUC missed an opportunity for far greater mobilisation of workers in Scotland on 18th of June; instead of just laying on transport to London they should have organised a Scottish demonstration to pound the employers and politicians closer to home with demands for pay increases of at least 10% across the board, underpinned by a Scottish minimum wage of at least £12 plus inflation. And investment in a Socialist Green New Deal based on public ownership of energy, all forms of transport and construction, rather than allowing the Scottish government hide behind the limitations of devolution as an excuse for following fundamentally the same path of real terms wage cuts as that being pursued by the Tories. 

Build a Scottish Mass Demo 

The STUC summit on the cost-of-living crisis on 17th of June is a golden opportunity to plan just such a mass demonstration in Scotland, to build solidarity with the various groups of workers taking industrial action, mobilising communities alongside trade unionists, and to rally behind an emergency programme on wages, job creation and a Socialist Green Recovery Plan to combat the cost of living crisis - which in reality is the cost of greed crisis, the cost of profiteering inherent to a capitalist system of production.

Protesting P&O, an obnoxious example of class war by employers 

 Seize the Billionaires' Wealth! 

We live in a fabulously wealthy economy, with no excuse for people having to choose between heating and eating; making all the more reprehensible the reports by Energy Action charity of people in Scotland literally burning furniture and floorboards to heat their homes. 

The combined wealth of Britain's 177 billionaires rose by 9.35% last year, to £653billion. A rise of £55billion in a year for 177 bloated fatcats. No ‘sensible wage demands’ for these creatures, one in three of whom have funded the Tory party. 

 The state of crisis facing millions of working-class people screams out for seizure of these exploiters’ ill-gotten wealth. For a socialist overturn of the class-ridden system that condemns millions to impoverishment whilst blessing the billionaires with wealth beyond human imagination. 

It’s time to meet the Tory class war on workers with equal determination and collective action. And we are many, they are few! 

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CLASS CONFLICT AT CHRISTMAS

Christmas is seen by all as a time for rest, escape, family life, a bit of indulgence - regardless of which religious belief or atheist views subscribed to.
A time of comfort and warmth in the deep mid-winter, rooted in pagan rituals of light and food amidst darkness and hunger. 
But capitalism has transformed it into a debt-fueled spending spree; a binge of commercial consumer spending to feed the insatiable appetite for profits for big business. And it's workers who suffer the downside.

Christmas 2016 is no exception. Capitalist exploitation carries on regardless of the 'season of goodwill' - a quality noticeable for its absence on the part of many employers, or the media outlets that lash out with venom at workers who dare to resist being deprived of even basic rights at Christmas, or indeed all year round. 

Spare a thought for all those hundreds of thousands of workers who get barely any break over the festive season, but are then vilified as wreckers, the architects of mayhem, when they dare take action to improve their lot. 

'Happy Christmas - That's me off to Work!'

In 2014 (the latest available figures) 365,000 retail workers had to leave their families and work on Boxing Day. 

For many, that meant enormous taxi fares due to the lack of public transport. For all of them, it meant being deprived of family time, especially when so many of us have two sides of a family living hundreds of miles apart. I have first-hand knowledge of this, with some of us facing a choice of either working until 3 or 4 in the morning of Christmas Eve, or else starting at 10pm on Christmas Day, to restock the store so it can open on Boxing Day.

No Presents for Working Boxing Day

And in recent years, retail workers won't even get a premium payment for doing such anti-social hours, as big companies boast about granting miserly hourly pay increases, or of being 'living wage employers', but rob back all or part of those wage concessions through abolition of double-time and time-and-a-half. 

No wonder 140,000 people so far have signed a Petition demanding a ban on shopping in big stores on Boxing Day, to reduce the exploitation of retail workers. 

Would our worlds collapse if there was no shopping on Boxing Day?! 
The frenzied festival of shopping for those 'must have' items is totally unnecessary, based on manufactured 'needs' which turbocharge the sales volumes and profit margins of a mere handful of national and multinational companies. 

And in many cases they open primarily because their competitors are open, regardless of the level of footfall. It's another expression of the harmful lunacy of capitalist competition, at the expense of totally distorted work/life balance for a vast army of workers. 

Solidarity with Argos Drivers 

Another much maligned group of workers right now are delivery drivers with Argos, because they have been provoked into a 72-hour strike on 20 December at Argos' central distribution centre in Staffordshire. Visions of those iPhones, iPads, Xboxes or books not arriving for family and friends on time are being painted by the media to cudgel the drivers into public isolation and surrender. 

They voted by an 83% majority to take this action after trying in vain for two years to be paid the Christmas holiday pay they're owed. On average each driver is owed £700, because Argos wasn't complying with legal rulings that spell out holiday pay should include overtime pay and nightshift allowances - what's called 'holiday average'. 

Their union, UNITE, are justifiably demanding two years' backlog in holiday pay, and are making the perfectly reasonable demand that it should be paid in time for workers' Christmas. 

The company bosses' response is a mixture of bloody intransigence, attempts to play down the impact the strike will have - with talk of 'business as usual' - and vitriolic outbursts as if the action will collapse modern civilization.

 

Scrooges in the Sky

British Airways cabin crew – also represented by Unite – have voted overwhelmingly for strike action. Their dispute is straightforward – around 4,000 staff have joined the airline since 2010 on “Mixed Fleet” contracts. These jobs were advertised with pay between £21,000 and £25,000 but, in reality, start at just over £12,000 plus £3 an hour flying pay!

A recent Unite survey found that half of Mixed Fleet staff have taken on second jobs to make ends meet, and more than two-thirds were going to work “unfit to fly” because they could not afford to be off sick.
Some even admitted they were sleeping in cars between flights, simply because they could not afford the petrol to get home. This is the reality of low-pay Britain, filled with capitalist Scrooges.

Strikes are not for Fun

What those who condemn any group of pre-Christmas strikers blithely ignore is the fact that taking such action hammers the pockets of the workers involved. Strikes are not a board game for family gatherings; they're a last resort, an attempt to right wrongs by withdrawal of workers' labour. 

Support Crown Post Office strikers 

That equally applies to the 4,000 Crown Post Office staff, members of the CWU union, who've declared five days of strikes up to Christmas Eve. 

They are sacrificing five days' pay to try and stop privatization of at least the 60 biggest of the 300 Crown Post Office branches, with the loss of 2,000 jobs; the forcible removal of the Final Salary Pension Scheme from half the 6,600 workforce, with cuts of at least 30% to their pensions on retirement; and the very existence of the Crown PO network which so many people rely on for daily services. 

These workers have tried to forced meaningful negotiations out of their employers for months, staging several previous strike days, and deserve the full solidarity of us all as they face a cold Christmas on the picket lines. 

Strike Ban on the Railways? 

But if these workers have been accused of causing mayhem, the railworkers on Southern Rail have been declared Devils incarnate, the biggest threat to civilization since Satan was a boy. 

Members of ASLEF and the RMT are both striking to end the carnage of passengers' safety by the profiteering vandals of Govia, the French-owned franchise-holders on the UK's biggest, busiest rail network. 

In their hunt for profit, and their desire to carry out the bidding of the Tory government, Govia has caused meltdown on the railways as they try to impose Driver Only Operations. They refuse to negotiate, arrogant in the knowledge they have Tory government backing in their attempts to smash the unions and impose life-endangering removal of guards. 

In response to the current 3-day strike, Tory Transport Minister Chris Grayling has entered the fray with talk of 'carefully considering' a ban on the right to strike on the railways. 

He simultaneously dismisses the strike as "pointless" - in which case why bother banning it?! - and laments the fact: 
"I can't step in to stop people striking. It is, unfortunately, a lawful strike." 
He's forced to concede the latter point after Govia failed in their repeated attempts to declare the action illegal through Court action. 

Dictatorship of Capital 

But rather than examine why workers have been prepared to lose numerous days' pay for a dispute that has nothing to do with pay rates, or pensions, but public safety, the Tories wade in with threats of a ban on the right of workers to withdraw their labour. When such dictatorial laws are applied in other countries, the Tories are willing to condemn these regimes as 'communist dictatorships' or 'banana republics' - unless, of course, these dictators are their trading partners, or partners in war crimes against other peoples - as they did with Pinochet's Chile in 1974, or Saudi Arabia today. 

Defend the Right to Strike 

The right to strike - to withhold your labour - is the most elementary human, democratic right that any worker should enjoy. And whilst Britain - the self-styled mother of parliamentary democracy - has never enshrined this right to strike in the constitution, an outright ban in the rail industry would be the first step towards outright, undisguised dictatorship by capital, a modern form of slavery. 

Strife Between Classes in the Season of Goodwill 

Amazon workers sleeping in tents in the woods outside the Dunfermline plant because they can't afford the fares to get to work in this hell-hole of humiliating conditions on the wages Amazon pay them; retail workers deprived of a full Christmas break with their families; Argos drivers losing wages to win two years' holiday back pay they're entitled to; Post Office staff braving the elements in defence of jobs, pensions and the very survival of the public service they provide; railworkers being demonized and threatened with forced labour under a Tory strike ban... welcome to Christmas 2016, the season of goodwill! 

Workers' Rights are not Just for Christmas!

The public inconvenience caused by strikes on the railways, delivery vans or Post Offices - or even the demand for shop shutdowns on Boxing Day - are being exploited by the media to try and whip up enmity between different sections of the same working class. Passengers against railworkers; consumers against delivery drivers; shoppers against retail workers. 

But the real point all this should highlight is entirely different: the utter dependency of society on working class people, regardless of which occupation, skills grade, colour, national origin, gender, or sexual identity. And unity in action of those who work (or want to work) for a living is fundamental to winning a better world. 

Society only functions because of the collective efforts of the working class. 

And class is central to the nature of society, as much at Christmas as during the rest of our lives under capitalism. 

Workers' rights are not just for Christmas - but it'd be a good start!

SCOTRAIL STRIKERS WIN FOR PUBLIC SAFETY!

The courageous determination of ScotRail guards, who sacrificed 13 days' pay by striking for public safety, has won a clear victory in a deal which will now be considered by the national executives of both the RMT and ASLEF unions, with negotiators recommending acceptance. 

After prolonged talks with ScotRail Abellio bosses - latterly involving combined negotiating teams from both unions - the employers have massively retreated from their original plans to extend Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains across the Central Belt and beyond. 
The deal reached retains the fundamental role of the safety-critical guards. It comes nowhere near the bosses' and government's original plans to dump core safety procedures - door operations and train dispatches - on the driver. It is a substantial victory for strike action by RMT members. 

ABELLIO BOSSES' ORIGINAL PLANS 
The Abellio bosses, driven by the franchise issued to them by the SNP government in October 2014, had hoped to get rid of the safety critical guards/conductors - and replace them with lower-paid, lesser-trained Ticket Examiners, who in at least 20% of cases are absent from DOO trains due to chronic staffing shortages. 
It was a case of cutting costs in the medium term, and to hell with the safety consequences. 

Contrary to any slick spin from Abellio bosses over the next 24 hours, we need to recall how they bullied staff; tried to bypass the union by use of social media and letters to guards' homes; refused to even meet the unions for weeks on end, let alone enter meaningful negotiations; conscripted management scabs to run trains at public risk; deployed fearful agency staff to hand out their propaganda; used a compliant capitalist media to belittle the role of guards and silence the workers' case from being heard and understood by the travelling public; threatened to use Westminster Tory anti-union laws against the RMT, to bludgeon their members into submission; and enjoyed the encouragement of the SNP government, whose Nicola Sturgeon also belittled the skilled guards' role, and the cause of the strikers, by echoing Abellio's contemptuous remarks about it being "all about who presses a button". 

THEY UNDERESTIMATED THE GUARDS! 
The Abellio bosses - and indeed the Scottish government who spurned the chance to take our railways back into public ownership, and instead actively encouraged the Dutch state-owned franchise-holders to implement DOO - severely underestimated the passion for safety and principled courage of RMT members.
Strike action has forced through a deal that is overwhelmingly a success story for the solidarity of workers taking action. 
It will guarantee a guard on every one of the new electrified trains (EMUs) planned for next year. 
That guarantee will apply for the remainder of the Abellio franchise - and indeed beyond, with a pledge that it will be transferred over to any future franchise, through TUPE. 
Furthermore - and critically - none of these trains will be allowed to move without a guard on board, which prevents the government or ScotRail bosses using weasel words about 'a second crew member being scheduled' - but then not actually on board, as happens with at least one in five DOO trains right now, where the train moves whilst being literally driver only, without a Ticket Examiner on duty. 

DOOR OPERATIONS & TRAIN DISPATCH 
The one area of concession by the unions is on operation of the train doors, but even on that the Abellio bosses have failed to fully get their way. They had intended that the driver would not only face the onerous task of driving, but would also be responsible for opening and shutting the doors, thereby making drivers in charge of train dispatches from stations, with all the huge risks to passengers that we've explained in previous articles and videos. 
But in the deal now being recommended by both the RMT and ASLEF negotiators, the driver will open the doors and the conductor/guard will close the train door, thereby retaining their vital role in checking for passengers' safety at the Passenger Train Interface (PTI). 

Compared with the current system that is a step backwards. It adds pressure to the driver; it increases the risk of trains stopping short on platforms (especially with the new, longer, eight carriage EMU trains) without the driver spotting the problem, which potentially could mean passengers spilling out onto the track. 
But with agreement that the guard will dispatch the train after safety checks at the station, and door technology that will help them correct mistakes by the driver on door controls, the most fundamental demands of the RMT strikers have been granted. That's a far cry from the original aims of the profit-driven Abellio bosses and Scottish government, to remove all control of the doors from the guards. 

FULL CREDIT TO THE STRIKERS 
This prolonged battle has shown the willingness of workers to take action if given a lead by their unions. It is to the eternal credit of those union activists who refused to just roll over and accept the DOO plans at the very start of the process. Their refusal to comply, or to just 'see how it goes', has been vindicated by the outcome. Above all, every one of the strikers who was prepared to put public safety top of the agenda, willing to lose wages in order to 'Keep the Guard', deserves the admiration and applause of every trade unionist, every passenger, every self-respecting worker. 

NOW DEMAND A GUARD ON EVERY TRAIN! 
This successful workers' struggle should now be the launchpad for the ongoing campaign to make trains safe: to win back a guard on every train that was converted to a DOO train, in most cases over 30 years ago. To win investment in safe, comfortable, fully staffed stations. To halt the cuts to infrastructure jobs and ticket offices. And to further the struggle for democratic public ownership of the railways, so that safety is put before profit, passengers before shareholders, the millions before the millionaires. 
The Scottish Socialist Party is proud to have fought alongside these courageous fighters - and we will continue to do so in favour of a fundamental change in the type of society we live in. 

DEMAND PUBLIC OWNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SAFETY ON OUR RAILWAYS

The battle to ensure public safety and job security on Scotland's railways continues, and the Scottish Socialist Party is determined to play its part alongside the rail workers' unions and passengers. 

The RMT union have called a major demo outside the Scottish parliament on 8 September, and a series of public meetings to acquaint the travelling public with the facts. 

The prolonged talks between ScotRail Abellio bosses and the two railway unions - RMT and ASLEF - have yet to reach an acceptable agreement on keeping the guards. Many workers are furious at the bosses' stalling tactics, and are willing to resume strike action if they don't rapidly offer an acceptable package that puts safety critical guards - not drivers, who should be left to drive - at the heart of train dispatch procedures, as demanded jointly by the RMT and ASLEF. 

Plague of Privatization 

Every event surrounding these issues proves that the plague of privatization and profiteering is totally incompatible with public safety and people's jobs being secured. In battling shoulder-to-shoulder for safety alongside railworkers and their unions, the SSP is arguing for democratic publIc ownership and control of the railways - and transport in general - as the only route to guaranteed investment in safety, instead of the big business racketeering and chaotic fragmentation of the railway system under privatization. 

Public Funds Bail Out Profits 

Perhaps the worst current example of how profit threatens safety and rips asunder public services is that of Southern railways - the busiest lines in the whole UK. Under privatization, French-owned Govia has the franchise, and has caused absolute mayhem and meltdown for passengers, whilst treating their staff like slaves to be punished for daring to stand up for public safety. When train drivers took industrial action to stop the company breaching safety agreements, they plundered about £250,000 from ASLEF through the capitalist courts, and seized drivers' mobile phones to gather evidence of orchestrated industrial action, whilst robbing them of their staff travel concessions. 

Reward for Failure

Hot on the heels of this, the same profit-crazed bosses have tried to bypass the RMT and brutally enforce Driver Only trains - removing the safety-critical guards. And just to rub salt into workers' wounds, this week the same company announced a phenomenal 27 per cent rise in their profits - to £99.8million for the year up to July. That's from revenues rising to £3.4billion. 

In case anyone dares get angry at this profiteering by a company that has made failure to deliver its watchword, its chief executive, David Brown, has generously waived his annual bonus and this year's salary increase. Before you forgive this benefactor, we should add he took home a humble £2.16million last year! 

Not content with this thick slice of profit, Govia's political puppeteers - the Tory government - had made their very own announcement regarding Southern railways... literally the day before. They declared that £20million of taxpayers' money was to be taken from government-run Network Rail's budget and thrown into the bottomless pit that is Govia-run Southern railways! An obnoxious example of workers and passengers bailing out the profiteers, after they've made the service a bitter laughing stock, at home and abroad. Reward for failure; propping up the profiteers at public expense. 

Capitalist Chaos on Railways 

This capitalist chaos on the railways - with the drive for profit threatening public safety and robbing both railworkers and passengers - applies across the UK, including Scotland. And all the pro-business, mainstream political parties prefer and perpetrate this profit-driven chaos; the Tories, LibDems, Labour and indeed the SNP. 

The roots of current battles to keep safety critical guards on our trains, and to stop cuts to station staff, ticket offices, signaling and track maintenance, go back to the McNulty Report of May 2011. 

This cringingly titled Rail Value for Money Study was commissioned by the Labour government of Blair and Brown - who retained Tory rail privatization throughout 13 years of Labour governments - but published and enthusiastically embraced by the subsequent Tory/LibDem Coalition. 

As the late, socialist RMT leader Bob Crow wrote at the time:

"The basic message of the McNulty report is that rail workers and passengers are being asked to pay the price of privatization. The multitude of private competing interests who make up our fragmented industry are not only let off the hook, but are given even more powers. The report is far from independent. It is based on the same crackpot ideology that led to the original privatization of our railways."

McNulty: Right Diagnosis, wrong Medicine

Sir Roy McNulty utterly ignored the damning evidence against privatization that his own study unearthed. For instance, that (by 2011) privatization had massively escalated costs of running the network, requiring three times as much public subsidy as under previous nationalisation; costing three times as much to run; being 30% less efficient than the railways in other European countries. In large measure because the latter are mostly state owned, and don't suffer the plague of scores of competing profiteers, each requiring their own dividend payouts to shareholders, individual borrowing costs, and chaotic lack of coordination - with a whole system of fines and incentive payments that are often contradictory, for instance between Network Rail and train operating companies. With train operators (TOCs) vying with rolling stock providers (ROSCOs) which lease them the trains, and a myriad system of payments between Network Rail and these, money ripped out of the labour of rail workers and passengers' fares has poured out of the industry into the coffers of numerous franchise-holders. 

Annual Waste of £1.2billion 

A full five years ago, in 2011, an RMT-commissioned study showed that £1.2billion a year was wasted this way. That's £1.2bn that could have been invested in track maintenance; new rolling stock; longer, faster and greener trains to match the rocketing number of passengers; safe, friendly, fully-staffed stations and ticket offices; and extension of safety-critical guards on every single train in the land. 

But that would have required coordination, rational planning, and a system driven by public need not private greed; it would need renationalisation of the entire railway network, with a democratic system of working class control and management. 

Instead of that, we've suffered the consequences of privatization before and since the McNulty report - a document which scorned the option of an integrated public rail network, and instead made many of the proposals for savage cuts and assaults on safety that are being rammed through right now, five years on

Passengers Suffer from Privatization 

Passenger numbers have rocketed since the mid-1990s; even by the time of the 2011 McNulty report, by 59%... and trains are even more overcrowded now. 

In Scotland, passenger journeys have exploded by 35% in the last 10 years, to 93 million a year. But rolling stock has lagged drastically behind the booming numbers of passengers. For instance, a recent report showed only one new seat on Scotland's trains for every 3,300 extra passenger journeys over 10 years! 

Fares have leapt up to the dearest in Europe - 30% higher than the average in Sweden, France, Switzerland and Holland (homeland of Abellio!), for instance. 

The McNulty plan for savage cuts earmarked 35% of all 'savings' to come through staff cuts. And the government and myriad competing train profiteers have gone about this business like demented axemen, with rampant closure of ticket offices, cuts to station staff, reduction of infrastructure and maintenance crews, and concerted removal of guards - one thing the rival train companies certainly agree on and coordinate their plans for. 

In the case of Scotland, successive franchise-holders - First Group and Abellio - have been hellbent on extending Driver Only Operations (DOO). In this they are carrying out the explicit aims of the McNulty report to the letter : 

"The default position for all services on the UK rail network should be DOO, with a second member of train crew only being provided where there is a commercial, technical or other imperative." (McNulty, May 2011)

SNP Implement McNulty 

But here's the rub: McNulty was a Westminster plan, initiated by New Labour, pursued by the Coalition and Tory governments with crazed zeal. However, transport is a devolved issue in Scotland, with control in the hands of the Holyrood government - the SNP government, elected on claims to be anti-austerity and to be 'Stronger for Scotland'. 

Which Scotland?! The Scotland of ScotRail workers and working class people relying on a cheap, integrated, safe rail service? No, by their deeds, the SNP have imitated the actions of other pro-big business parties when it comes to the railways.

As far back as May 2012, under Alex Salmond's government, the Scottish parliament's Infrastructure & Capital Investment Committee left us in no doubt about their intentions - probably feeling secure in the knowledge the general public wouldn't read such a document! They stated, in black and white:

"We heard ideas that Transport Scotland could use to ensure that efficiency savings recommended in the McNulty Report are realised... Passengers care little about how the franchise is run... paving the way towards meeting the targets recommended by the McNulty Review...".

So instead of using the powers already devolved to set a clear, inspiring example of what Scottish independence could deliver regarding rail services, the SNP grabbed onto the poisoned plans of McNulty and sought to implement them.

Government Behind Abellio Bosses 

Of course some welcome investment and improvements have been implemented. But not a finger has been lifted by the SNP to remove the profit motive from the service, despite all the evidence in favour of public ownership that McNulty's research inadvertently provided. 

Instead of ScotRail being taken into Scottish government control in 2014, the SNP handed it over to Dutch government control, via the Dutch state-owned Abellio. And just to prove their zeal for McNulty, the Transport Scotland arm of the SNP government insisted on extension of DOO as a clause in the franchise awarded to Abellio. 

It's the hand of SNP government that lurks behind the cost-cutting crusade to get rid of guards, regardless of the cost to public safety. It's only the courageous strike action by the same guards that has stayed the hand of the butchers. 

Literally Driver Only!

Alongside that, the Scottish government has turned a blind eye to trains running literally driver only - without even a lower-paid, lesser-trained Ticket Examiner on board. 

During the RMT strikes, the government and Abellio were quick to endlessly repeat that 57% of ScotRail trains are already DOO. But whilst there are 600 guards on the minority share of trains, there are only 300 Ticket Examiners employed to staff the 57%! It doesn't take a Maths degree to spot that means there aren't even enough Ticket Examiners to ensure one on every DOO journey.
Monitoring by drivers in recent months proves at least 20% of DOO trains run without even a second crew member - with all the horrendous potential safety consequences.

Alongside that, by the SNP government's own admission, 70 per cent of all Scotland's stations are totally unstaffed. That's a factor behind several heartbreaking incidents of disabled people being left stranded on the station at night, with no station staff, or guard, or Ticket Examiner to help them. 

Safety Demands Public Ownership 

The SSP strongly supports the rail unions' campaigns to ensure safe trains. We call for every one of the current 600 guards' posts to be retained, undiluted, with full control of train dispatch. We demand that safety-critical system be extended to a guard on EVERY train, including those converted to DOO in times of much less jam-packed trains 30-plus years ago. 

We want every station to be staffed, with a ticket office, and provision for passenger comfort and safety. We call for full investment in infrastructure and maintenance. 

And the SSP goes even further than opposing the crucifying fare increases used to fuel privateers' profit: we campaign for an integrated, fare-free public transport system, a measure to combat poverty and pollution, a policy that would generate vast numbers of new and skilled jobs for this and future generations.

SSP Track Record 

Railworkers and passengers alike should study the track record of the pro-capitalist parties - regardless of the colour of their rosettes at election time - in contrast with that of Scotland's socialist party, the SSP. 

The first set stands up for profit through privatization, with horrendous safety consequences, and rampant waste to the public purse. In stark contrast, the SSP campaigns tirelessly for democratic public ownership of our railways and wider transport services, to ensure investment in people's needs and safety - as part of the broader aims we share with the RMT union Rule Book, which declares, "for the supercession of the capitalist system by a socialistic order of society". 

Join us in that struggle: your safety, security and environmental well-being is at stake. 

TAKE SIDES WITH SCOTRAIL SAFETY STRIKERS

After 13 days of rock-solid strike action, Scotrail guards/conductors continue to display tremendous courage and self-sacrifice in defence of public safety. These RMT union members are increasingly winning public support for their stance, as they suffer the loss of wages in opposition to the profit-driven Abellio bosses' reckless gamble with passenger safety, trying to impose Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains across the Central Belt and beyond. But behind a smokescreen of lies from the Abellio Scotrail spin machine - plus a lashing out with legal threats to the RMT - there are sure signs that these arrogant bosses are beginning to retreat, with a new proposal emerging from talks with both the RMT and drivers' union Aslef, literally as we post this article. Details of Abellio's offer are still hazy, but both unions would be wise to adopt the motto 'keep chasing them, they're on the run'. 

This Strike is About Safety 

The Scotrail guards' strike is about safety, not salaries. It's about keeping the safety-critical guards on the train, instead of dumping added responsibilities on the drivers. It's about retaining the highly-trained guards instead of - at best - replacing them with lesser-trained Ticket Examiners, whose overwhelming role is revenue collection, not safety; in reality, with no other staff on many trains except the driver. 

Scotrail has pumped out a stream of lies, claiming they have no intention of making trains Driver Only Operated (DOO) during Abellio's franchise. But that's precisely the aim that's embedded in the franchise issued to them by the SNP government in October 2014. DOO is what they proposed in a letter to all staff in March. Even more explicitly, that's the aim spelt out in the accidentally leaked documents from Abellio bosses last month, which they only then apologized for - with utterly unbelievable excuses that they were 'purely discussion documents' - after Aslef threatened to ballot Scotrail drivers for action, thereby opening up a second front.

It's Not About Buttons! 

Abellio bosses want to extend DOO trains on the backs of the new fleet of Hitachi electrified trains (EMUs) as a way of cutting costs and boosting their profits even further. They say it's to speed up train dispatches from stations by 15 seconds - but at what cost to safety? That's where their lie machine seeks to smother the safety-critical role of guards from public view, and insult these skilled workers with one-liners about the RMT "indulging in unnecessary strikes over who presses a button". Who in their right minds would sacrifice three weeks' pay (so far) over who presses a button?! 

The Safety-Critical Role of Guards 

The guards are intensively and regularly trained in at least 35 different skills that can make the difference between life and death, and certainly guarantees a level of safety and security otherwise missing for the rising number of passengers. Their skills include track safety; risks with electrified lines; dealing with fires, suspicious packages, and on-train incidents; dealing with train accidents and evacuations; signaling systems and regulations; station duties; safe train dispatches - as well as a host of customer services for disabled passengers, elderly people, on-train illnesses, and those most vulnerable to harassment and even assault by the anti-social minority, especially later at night. 

The guards' role includes ensuring the train is correctly positioned at the platform, avoiding passengers spilling out onto the track if it pulls up short (as happens). They get off the train to ensure safety at the 'Platform Train Interface' - looking out for passengers falling, getting trapped in doors, getting stuck between the train and platform, alert to late runners especially - as well as helping disabled or frail passengers on and off. They only close the doors and signal the driver to drive off after all these safety checks. 

In the case of accidents, where the driver is incapacitated or even killed, the guards are trained to take over communication with signal staff and carry out a range of procedures to prevent a multiple pile-up of trains, as well as safe evacuation procedures. 

In contrast, Ticket Examiners primarily sell and check tickets, with only very limited customer services duties. And they are substantially lower paid than conductors/guards - which is why dilution or downright abolition of the guards' role is attractive to money-grabbing Abellio bosses - and indeed the Westminster Tory government, who commissioned the 2011 McNulty Report, which pushed for imposition of DOO trains across the UK.

Literally Driver Only! 

Abellio Scotrail bosses have fired off a double-barreled lie with their protestations that they will 'always schedule a second member of staff on all trains'. What they don't mention is that they mean Ticket Examiners, instead of guards. What they desperately try to hide is the fact that on already-existing DOO trains, at least 20% run without even a Ticket Examiner on board; literally driver only! For instance, a driver I know has had an average of two trains a day with no TE in the past fortnight. At least 300 DOO trains per fortnight in recent months have run with only the driver on board. That's especially the pattern at night - precisely when anti-social behaviour and the dangers at unstaffed stations are most prevalent. 

Understaffing means Ticket Examiners are frequently asked to change from a back shift to morning, when the highest ticket revenue is available, leaving drivers to be the sole staff member on later trains. An added pressure towards that trend is that safety monitoring through 'SQUIRES' is effectively only a 9 to 5 operation, leaving later trains to carry on regardless of safety risks. 

Rising Risks - Demand Guards on ALL trains

Two other devastating factors underline the critical importance of keeping the guards on our trains - and indeed of not only defending the jobs and roles of the existing 600 guards, but of demanding the SNP government stand up for safety by re-introducing guards on ALL Scotrail trains. 

Even the Rail Standards and Safety Board - funded by the train companies! - has newly reported a rise in assaults on platforms and trains, and a devastating 48% rise in accidents at the Platform Train Interface - the likes of 'grab and drag', falls onto the track, etc. 

And the Scottish government Transport Secretary Humza Yousaf recently admitted an astonishing 70% of Scotland's stations - 214 out of 346 - are entirely unstaffed! 

It's Time to go Dutch! 

Abellio bosses are trying to impose DOO trains despite the proven risks to safety because their prime aim is profit maximization. And their attempts to hoodwink the public morph into obnoxious hypocrisy when we consider who owns Abellio, and what their parent company practices regarding train conductors.

Abellio was awarded the franchise by the SNP government in October 2014 - in itself a disgraceful decision, when they could have taken Scotrail into public ownership, as favored by a sweeping majority of the Scottish people. So the Scottish government spurned the opportunity for Scottish state ownership in favour of Dutch state ownership; Abellio is part of the Dutch state-owned railway company, Nederlandse Spoorwegen. The latter reported "revenue from passenger transport increased by £644.8million (in 2015) primarily due to the start of the Scotrail franchise". 

And the profits siphoned off Scotrail workers and passengers have then contributed to their policy of having not just one, but TWO guards on most Dutch trains!! 

Abellio Bosses' Methods Stink 

Abellio's methods, in pursuit of profit, stink. For months they've planned to impose DOO across the Central Belt, bypassing the unions by use of Yammer, social media and letters to workers' home addresses. Never have they consulted with the recognized unions on their proposals. They conscripted an army of strikebreaking scabs, mostly managers, to try and break the back of the RMT. They sought to enlist a new batch from Merseyrail. They tried to divide and conquer workers by offering 'guarantees' to a minority of the guards on High Speed Trains and diesels - whilst refusing to even discuss their DOO plans with the RMT or Aslef. They rarely even agreed to talks, including ones brokered by ACAS, and consistently failed to make any meaningful proposals when they did turn up. 

Abellio in Retreat 

They hoped they could browbeat workers into submission. But they reckoned without the courage and tenacity of RMT strikers, and the growing opposition of drivers in Aslef to DOO. 

So now Abellio has switched to a combination of repression and concession to try and break the opposition they encounter. They've just announced legal action against the RMT for 'inducing an overtime ban'. This accusation is utter rubbish; it treats workers as cattle with no minds of their own. But it's meant to scare the unions into submission. 

And now they have floated a new proposal that allegedly guarantees a guard on every one of the new trains (EMUs), but would give drivers control over the train doors. That's a very significant retreat compared to their stance over recent months. 

But it still begs several questions, still unanswered at least as we post this blog: Will the guard still deal with platform and train dispatches safety? If so, why not also control of the doors? What if guards go onto the platform but the driver doesn't see them and moves off? Why add to the burdens of responsibility already faced by drivers? What guarantee is there for the full duration of the Abellio franchise, and indeed after it finishes? What's to stop Abellio or their successors from phasing out guards in favour of cheaper labour - Ticket Examiners - if the roles they play are blurred, with dilution of the safety roles of the guards? 

How Concessions Won

The reality is this concession has been wrung out of Abellio by the courageous, solid strike action of RMT members, the growing demand from Aslef branches for a strike ballot against DOO, and events which continued strikes will hugely impact on. Glasgow's Queen Street station is opening earlier than planned after a major overhaul, and additional services for the Edinburgh Fringe are planned, tapping into the holiday season, including the school holidays in England.

It's the first offer Abellio has made to the unions! Which, depending on details, doesn't necessarily mean the unions should accept, as it shows bosses in retreat.

SSP Acts in Solidarity 

SSP members and supporters have played an important part in stepping up the pressure on Abellio - and not just through building public support for the strikers, important as that is. They were the first to demand and organise emergency branch meetings of Aslef members, which have been attended by about a third of the members - a tremendous turnout considering the number of drivers on shift at the time of meetings - where Motions demanding a strike ballot have been unanimously passed, as well as donations to the RMT strike fund. 

It's no accident that subsequent to these meetings, and public announcement of their decisions, Abellio immediately agreed to talks with Aslef on DOO - after months of refusing to - and then met with the RMT and floated their new proposal. They're frightened of united action by the two unions - which is precisely why the SSP has persistently argued for Aslef to join with the RMT in action for the policy they jointly declared as recently as 27 November 2015:

"We are completely opposed to Driver Only Operation and its forms, including Driver Controlled Operation (DCO) and Driver Door Operation (DDO), throughout the network. We firmly believe this method of operation is less safe for passengers and the workforce and our unions will not agree to the extension of DOO or DCO/DDO under any circumstances. 

The responsibility of the driver of the train is to drive, which requires100% focus. It is less safe for both the driver and passengers if the driver is distracted by additional duties such as protecting the platform train interface. The guard/conductor should retain responsibility for door operation."

You Can Help Win

Anyone reading this can add their weight to the strikers' courageous battle for public safety. Organise workplace collections and union donations to the RMT strike fund. Visit your nearest picket line. Write letters in support to local media. Send solidarity messages to m.hogg@rmt.org.uk 

Bombard your local MSPs and the Scottish government with demands to 'Keep the Guards'. 

The stance of the SNP government on this issue shows up their leadership as pro-big business, not friends of the unions as they'd like us believe. They awarded Abellio a franchise that aims to extend DOO. They've failed to condemn Abellio's union-bashing, safety-slashing mission. Nicola Sturgeon last month trotted out the company line that this was all about 'who presses a button'. 

SNP Transport Secretary Humza Yousaf tweeted, on 23 July, "Strikes should be suspended and passengers put first while dialogue ongoing". What dialogue?! Abellio had at that stage refused any meaningful negotiations. Far from suspending strikes, it was only after sustained RMT strikes and Aslef branch votes for action that they've even started talking to the unions about DOO. 

The SNP government should be pounded with demands to fine Abellio for provoking disruption to services, strip them of the franchise, and to take Scotrail into public ownership - with a guard on every train.

It's time to take sides! The SSP stands squarely with the Scotrail strikers for safety - join us.