The RMT rail workers’ union has elected Mick Lynch as its new general secretary, in a result just announced.
Lynch acted briefly as a stand-in general secretary after the departure of previous incumbent Mick Cash, but stood down to take time off because of stress.
Rail workers have been heavily impacted by the pandemic yet received no priority for vaccination.
Lynch’s election statement to members read:
Our members and our communities face tremendous challenges in the period ahead, the greatest of which, apart from the health crisis itself, is preserving their jobs, pay, conditions and their health and safety in the workplace.
We also have to guard against attacks by government and others in the transport services and energy sectors on which our members’ jobs depend.
The success of our union depends on maximum unity and focus across our organisation making sure that we concentrate on those challenges rather than turning in on ourselves.
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Great News! Mick Lynch received more branch nominations for the role, 85, than his three competitors combined. He’s a popular choice and is very well placed to challenge the ‘toxic atmosphere’ that caused him as acting GS and his predecessor, Mick Cash, to resign.
Let’s hope Mick Lynch has the strength and the vision and the management skills to make RMT better able to represent its staff against the exploitative, short-term franchise operators who inefficiently run the nation’s rail system singularly to maximise stockholder value.
As Off The Rails’s blog concluded last year:
*. RMT must address mental health issues and bullying allegations
*. External investigation needed, but union must change itself
*. Genuine debate, criticism, and accountability is essential, and is not bullying
*. For a union led by members, through our lay representatives, not by officers
*. The National Executive Committee must run the union, but run it more effectively
*. Urgent, militant action is needed to fight job cuts and attacks on terms and conditions
*. The rank and file – grassroots union members in workplaces – must organise.
If anyone can lead RMT to achieve better pay and conditions and re-focus how the union’s NEC operates with the GS, and retemper the union to let it grow and develop in a dire socio-political atmosphere, let it be Mick Lynch.
qwertboi – here’s the link for anyone interested in reading the full blog
https://workersliberty.org/blogs/2020-09-16/conflict-rmt
That’s helpful, thanks.
Be weary of “Workers Liberty” all is not as it seems, it is a bit like most of Thatcher’s Neoliberal Neolabour Party Tories who have Left/Left-Leaning and Socialist on their Wiki Pages and Momentum/Labour List/Novara Media.
Once in a while something is what you’d expect, well written and researchable, but mostly it is not what you’d expect from such a Socialist/Communist looking Blog/Site.
They do recommend some good books I guess.
I thought the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty were fairly typical trotskyist marxists. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up distrusting everything and everyone – just like the psychopathis billionaires want us to
The danger is opportunity is a very close-knit and elusive creature. That is how we ended up with a 90/95% Neolabour Tory PLP, a “Left-Wing” MSM “The Guardian, The Mirror” that is as Right Wing and The Sun, just in more eloquent ways, etc etc, etc
It is exactly that the Billionaires who hand-pick out of the millions from the absolutely desperate, their Generals of the Future. We have to look very closely at who we trust and when we find reason to distrust we must show discipline never to return. How many times have we seen Neoliberal Lucas or HIGNFY criticised for their unfair attacks on JC on our Indie Media/MSSM only to find people quoting those same bastards now that the dust settled. No! Lucas is still a Neoliberal fruitcake and HIGNFY are still Neoliberal Upper Middle Class Entertainers who twist their lines to cut deep but seem innocently “funny”!
That is also why The Many are forever losing, we have all had jobs where the Manager/Management were overpaid and incompetent arseholes. Where we are already streaks ahead in the outcomes of their poor decisions. The fellow workers who do absolutely nothing but John who quietly and stoically did the work of two, gets the sack for oversleeping one morning!
It is because of The Billionaires who hand pick Opportunity that a “Fairly Typical Trotskyist Marxists” has become Anti Corbyn, Anti Bennet, Anti-“pro-Corbyn Skwawky” and Anti US The PEOPLE, There is a Class of so called “Socialists” whom I refer to as the ‘Celebrity Socialists’.
There are only 2 kinds of People in the world:
The PEOPLE who stand for The People
or
The PEOPLE who stand for Themself, Materialism and The Elites/Establishment/Machine aka The Billionaires.
To keep us separated and divided they create a desperation for money, to feed the need to satisfy the addiction to ‘their’ material shite, sold to the masses by their Propagandist Commercialism. So we all end up up in these ‘fluff bubbles’ intoxicated by Desire and Envy, and blinkered to our real world. We can’t see the homeless etc any more, we are in a permanent state of calculating how we can’s.
We have to check everything over and over again, treat everything and everyone as our enemy until they prove us differently, it is the only way we can reconnect the 95%, by exploration and then reaching out.
We’re living in a world of make believe even the people who make the believe were made to believe that they are what they believe they are, but they are not. By simply writing Socialist on your Wiki Page does not make you so, but I bet you anything Starmer believes that he is, by writing for a “Fairly Typical Trotskyist Marxists” Publication/Blog/Site does not make you so, if your writing does not absolutely serve and support the best interests of The PEOPLE.
These are just ramblings of my Autistic brain about the way I see things, and the solutions or perceptions I see to problems. You have your own life and “set of rules” you or no one else needs to believe me, but for me it is important to get it out whenever I see something as subtle as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty/Momentum/Novara, etc. It is our way of working towards solutions, Other People’s thoughts are so valuable and precious, that is where we learn even if subconsciously from each other all of the time. Go and spend some time exploring that site, search various people and scan even some of the “positive” Articles.
Good Luck!
Stay Strong!
They have a particular dislike for pro-Corbyn Skwawky and regularly attack it.
They’re not very Corbyn/Corbynite friendly are they!
I get horrified at some of the attacks on SB in the wider media, just vile Personal Thuggery, sad lonely people with hearts full of hate!
I appreciate your thoughts Skelly – but, when all’s said and done, they’re Trotskyists, we’re not. They don’t understand our participative model of democratic socialism, and we tend to think that revolution (nevermind ‘permanent revolution’) is not what is possible. They’ve got different values. We might not share the same values, but it’s no reason to distrust them just to (ty and) understand them better.
By now all Communists/Socialists must surely understand and see that Democratic Socialism is our only stepping stone into Government and then Communism and Socialism will naturally become more Mainstream and also be able to get a foot in the door.
If Attacking Democratic Socialism especially at the crucial times that they did, was not in the Best Interests of Communism/Socialism one would also expect that they would not smash up their Stepping Stone.
Democratic Socialism is a Temporary “Solution” for many Communists/Socialists, who are not interested in bloody Revolutions.
It will be near impossible to get The Communist Party into The HoC, based on what happened to a Centre Left Democratic Socialist Party in 2015 to 2020, just imagine The Communist Party, especially if we start discussing Land ownership! 🙂
Our words are our ideas/ideologies we don’t impose we share, you take what is good for you and I take what is good for me, and we reject what is not
I do occasionally have a look about, but trust is not earned easily. I do not speak with bias, but of my own experiences or findings.
It is good for the world to hold different opinions, we just have to be careful where we “buy”.✊