The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) has launched a national campaign to fight plans by the train operating companies and the Government to close ticket offices across the rail network. The union warns that the plans would see the closure of over 1,000 ticket offices across the country and the loss of thousands of jobs.

At a lively demonstration organised by the local Green Party outside of Hastings Station last Tuesday (18 July), a large crowd gathered to protest and to make their views known on just how important it is to keep ticket offices open.

Jill White from St Leonards said the decision to close ticket offices would be disastrous for passengers, especially for those with disabilities and the elderly who would be left particularly vulnerable.

Vital 

This view was echoed by Marisa McGreevy-Rose from West St Leonards. She believes ticket office staff are a vital part of the passenger experience as they ensure our railways are safe, secure and accessible. She said the loss of key station staff would be particularly difficult for blind people who rely on their help and support; without them, they just would not be able to travel.

Mike Turner from West Hill, a frequent train user, says it is virtually impossible to buy the cheapest ticket online and added that he has forgotten how many times ticket office staff have helped him buy the most appropriate and cheapest ticket for his journey.

Adele Bates of Warrior Square said the plans were further proof that profit was more important than people. She said the replacement of staffed ticket offices with ticket machines, “which invariable do not work properly”, was short-sighted and would leave train stations deserted and passengers extremely frustrated.

A second demonstration, this time organised by the Hastings and District Trades Union Council, took place outside Hastings Station last Saturday morning (22 July), addressed by Hastings Borough Council leader Paul Barnett. He told another enthusiastic crowd that “we all need to stand up and be counted if we want to save our vital public services.” 

Resistance in Rye

The closure plans are also being resisted in neighbouring Rye. Kevin Boorman, the chair of the Marshlink community rail partnership, said the proposals to cut the staffing levels at Rye Station were “ludicrous”. He added “Rye is a busy tourist town, with large numbers of visitors arriving at weekends, both day trippers and staying visitors for Rye and Camber. To close early during the week is bad enough, but to have no staff in the station from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning was crazy”.

Helena Dollimore, the Labour Party candidate for the Hastings and Rye constituency, said there were “many people across Hastings and Rye who are very worried about these proposals to close our ticket offices. Basic questions as to the impact on disabled passengers, on the elderly, on staff and on the roll-out of technology in stations have been left unanswered. And, to make matters worse, people have been given just 21 days to have their say. Railroading the plans through without consideration for disabled passengers, the elderly and others only risks exacerbating the managed decline of our rail network.” 

Govia Thameslink Railway, which runs the Southern train operating company, carried out what has been widely criticised as a cursory, limited three-week public consultation on its plans, which ended on 26 July.

Across the country, too, there has been strong criticism of the whole consultation process. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, along with his counterparts in other northern cities, has vowed to take legal action against all the train companies “if the consultation to close the majority of rail ticket offices is not halted”.

Unlike the trains, this story is likely to run and run. 

By Rosie Brocklehurst

I wanted to let local people know about the extremely positive experiences I have had with members of the RMT, ASLEF and RCN nurses. I am a chronically ill and disabled woman. I have severe arthritis, several other conditions and am awaiting knee replacement. I am 73 and use a wheelchair.

In February last year I was placed on a new NHS treatment trial to address what had hitherto been an incurable urological condition. I could not be accepted on to it without the ability to self-catheterise using liquid gentamicin. Disaster struck: I failed to do it, and the doctors said it looked like this was not going to be possible for me. But a local nurse, Antonia Berelson, heard about me from a mutual Hastings friend and offered to come and train me for nothing, after 12 hour shifts, for five days in a row.

Thanks to her efforts, I got the hang of it despite my physical disability, and was accepted onto the trial. Almost a year later, on 12 January, I embarked on a 95 minute off peak journey from St Leonards Warrior Square to London’s Guys Hospital, feeling very apprehensive about a further uncomfortable urological procedure scheduled for 12 noon. I travelled in my wheelchair, with my retired teacher husband Paul.

We were helped into the disabled carriage by a charming guard called Ray, only to discover that the lifts serving my destination platform were out of use. Escalators and stairs at London Bridge are incredibly steep and there was no way I could navigate or walk. I would have missed my urology operation if I had had to go into Charing Cross and come back out again. However another guard, RMT member George, rapidly arranged with staff at London Bridge and the train driver to divert the train in that incredibly busy station, to a different platform with a functioning lift, so I could get to hospital on time.

I was so amazed and pleased I chatted with George further. I asked him what he did to earn money, as he gets no money at all on strike days. He told me he plays the bagpipes and has occasionally been known to do a gig or two. George plays so well in fact, that despite not being a Scot, he was invited to welcome Prince Charles (before he became King) into Edinburgh’s Waverley Station. I asked how that went down with the Scots. “Fine until I opened my mouth to speak,” said George.

This catalogue of human kindnesses was completed by superlative hospital staff in a very busy Urology Department at Guys. So, a day of anxiety was soothed by nurses, doctors and railway staff. I was therefore so overwhelmed with admiration to see my friend and helper, RCN nurse Antonia Berelson being interviewed this week on Sky News, the BBC, Talk TV and Meridien arguing the nurses’ case.

Unions are simply groups of working people trying to maintain a decent life for their families. As I have experienced: the public sector teachers, nurses, doctors, train drivers, fire brigade and ambulance service and so on, will often rise above deep and justified grievances to reveal immense generosity of spirit. They are the best of us.

When multi-millionaire Nadhim Zahawi, Tory Party national chair, attacks striking nurses for being dupes of Putin, you know he’s desperate. The Conservative Party have accepted millions in donations from Russian oligarchs. Zahawi, who claimed parliamentary expenses to heat his horses’ stables, is the last person to be lecturing anyone about “responsibility”.

Retail Price Index inflation has jumped from 4% to over 14% in a single year – heating and food increases are even higher. Since the banking crash of 2008, workers have faced the longest sustained squeeze on living standards for 200 years. Average real wages have fallen by 7%, and in the public sector real wages have fallen by about 20%. Food banks, which hardly existed before 2008, are now more common than McDonalds.

Workers in Hastings have had enough. Rail workers have taken 19 days of strike action, and low-paid train cleaners have been part of the first national cleaners’ strike. Postal workers at the Hastings delivery offices are locked in a war to save jobs and their service. BT engineers based at Sedlescombe Rd North won a £1,500 pay rise after strikes. The crisis in the NHS has reached a new low, with services crumbling. Ambulance workers based at Bohemia Road went on strike on December 21 and January 11, with emergency cover provided direct from the picket line. For the first time ever, nurses in the RCN will strike on January 18 at the Conquest and elsewhere.

Billionaire Profiteers

Britain is in the grip of a profiteering crisis. There are now a record 177 billionaires worth a combined £567 billion. Research by Unite has shown that profit margins for the top 350 FTSE companies rose by 73% during the pandemic years of 2019-2021. Tory peer Lady Michelle Mone’s company, awarded ‘VIP’ status, made a cool £100 million in profit from PPE contracts during the pandemic, of which £70 million has been taken off-shore and at least £29 million stashed in private family trusts. The rich are getting richer at our expense.

The big surprise is not that strikes are happening now – it’s that a fightback has been so long coming. So, what has changed?

The cost-of-living-emergency has created a common experience across the whole working class; everyone knows that we are all in it together. This helps to explain why nearly two million workers have voted for strike action and why the strikes are so popular.

Heroes or Zeroes?

This is the revolt of essential workers. During the Covid lockdowns, ‘key workers’ continued to work despite the risks, with utterly inadequate PPE. They accepted pay freezes. Covid fatalities were disproportionately high (which also explains why BAME workers were hit harder). Clapped as heroes but now treated as zeros – insulted and vilified by Tory politicians and their craven media. “But now we know what we are worth,” said the GMB union representative of Hastings refuse collectors at a trade union rally earlier this year.

The revolt is about more than pay. “We cannot do our jobs properly” is a common refrain, the public sector has been cut to the bone, ‘line managed’ with ridiculous targets and subject to unsustainable ‘efficiency measures’. The recent King’s Fund report confirms that the NHS is close to collapse because of years of cuts and marketisation.

To deflect blame, the Tories want us to join in the scapegoating of refugees. But the crises in health and housing are not caused by an “invasion” of people arriving in small boats. It’s the Etonians and the people using executive jets and limousines we should worry about.

Paying for Pay Rises

It would cost £1.6 billion for an above-inflation pay rise for nurses. But the cost of Rishi Sunak’s tax handouts was £7.3 billion. Last year the government removed the cap on bankers’ bonuses and loosened the banking regulations brought in after the 2008 crash. These are the conditions for more speculative bubbles and another crash. Guess who will be expected to pick up the pieces?

Instead of stuffing the pockets of the super-rich, the government could be investing in green jobs – a massive programme of housing insulation; rapid expansion in renewable energy sources like wind, tidal and solar; cheap, or even free, public transport.

‘Enough is enough’ is the slogan of the day. Strikes are escalating, with many workers discovering their collective power for the first time.

Where Are We?

At the time of writing, none of the disputes have been resolved. The government are not even prepared to negotiate with RCN nurses’ union leaders. Their pay claim of RPI inflation plus 5% is utterly reasonable if the historic pay squeeze is to be reversed and the chronic understaffing addressed. Physiotherapists and midwives also voted for strike action. Junior doctors are balloting. Ambulance workers took national strike action for the first time in over 30 years. It is shocking that Labour’s shadow health spokesperson, Wes Streeting, has sabotaged the nurses’ claim by saying that it is unaffordable and that a future Labour government would not pay up.

In exchange for a paltry pay offer the government expects the rail workers to accept thousands of job losses, the closure of all ticket offices, driver only trains and a 50% cut in track maintenance inspections. The RMT are fighting for a safe railway, for secure jobs and a pay rise after three years of pay cuts. Train cleaners on the minimum wage and outsourced to cost-cutting contractors are fighting for £15 an hour and to be treated like all other rail workers. Renationalisation without compensation cannot come soon enough.

Postal workers are up against a Royal Mail management who want to create gig-economy jobs – they want to rip up terms and conditions using only owner/drivers and new starters on 20% less. This is an existential crisis for the Communication Workers Union and they have the full support the entire trade union movement.

With civil servants, teachers and firefighters balloting for national strike action a showdown is looming.

Government on the Attack

The government is threatening new anti-strike legislation, the use of troops and emergency powers. These threats are real, but the Tories are chronically divided and widely despised. Their political base is fragile and disintegrating, which is why they are so vicious.

Our power is in our strikes and in our numbers. Now is the time to unify the strikes so that everyone is out together. A national coordinated strike would create a political crisis for the government.

Hastings & District Trades Union Council will do everything we can to build solidarity for the strikes. At last there is light at the end of the long dark tunnel of austerity and Tory rule. Together we can win!

It took me several weeks to get a chance to sit down and talk to Bella, a National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) rep for the Churchill contractors. They clean trains for Southern, Gatwick Express, Great Northern and Thameslink. I’d met her on a strike day at Hastings Station. Since then, she’s been busy trying to make up for the income she’d lost during (unpaid) strike days. That meant 12-hour shifts, and when you work for Churchill, that often means 14-hour days at least, because cleaners get no help with, or money for, travel to work. If stations are closed for any reason they must either travel further to work or go without. And where does that leave Network Rail’s idea that workers must have a clear 12 hours rest between shifts?

Bella Fashola

Discussing that conundrum led us into talking about all the consequences of the Covid years that hit minimum-wage contract-workers (those people we called “essential workers” and “key workers” during lockdown, and then forgot about).

Bella tells me workers still lose money over Covid. On the railways, contractors think you can work if you have Covid. The railway companies say you can’t – so for the cleaners, a positive Covid test means they can’t work but they don’t get paid for missing work. At best, the contractors will tell the cleaners to use their rest days or holiday days to “make up for” days they aren’t allowed on the stations. Imagine, ‘What did you do on your holidays? I stayed at home with Covid.’ Lovely!

It seems much of the Government and media discussions of current problems are based on people in relatively secure work, earning average and above salaries. For outsourced workers, most of that discussion is sheer fantasy. Only during my recent discussions with RMT workers did I realise many of the platform and station staff I know are zero-hour contract workers. Many of the people you see working in your station or on your train are still earning well under £10 per hour. The RMT cleaners are demanding a rise to £15 per hour – they are not asking for the world, they are ordinary people asking for a wage to match the work they do in a safety critical environment.

So if you are lucky enough to have a relatively secure salary with the attendant benefits, please consider the situation of many of RMT’s workers, and all the problems associated with working for contractors. The key issue is that contracts are quite short, so contract negotiators are constantly looking for ways to shave what they have to pay for, and the service they have to provide. One of the consequences that Bella told me about is the women who miss out on maternity pay if they have the misfortune to give birth on the wrong day. If a baby is premature, the mother is expected to live on air until the “agreed” due date for maternity payments. Another is that, despite all the dangers of the Covid years, stations and trains are getting progressively less well cleaned, as contractors cut corners to try to under-bid each other on costs.

Interestingly though, for many workers there was also an unexpected advantage to Covid lockdowns and limitations. Insecure and outsourced workers were, just like the rest of us, forced to stay in one place for longer. That gave an increased opportunity for relationships to develop, and for unions to organise. In Bella’s case, there was a second factor. She lost more work-time due to her mother being diagnosed with cancer and needing care – which gave her time to think and plan – but also the experience of it taking five weeks to get a proper payment on Universal Credit to cover her lost earnings. It made her sufficiently vociferous about the plight of underpaid, insecure workers that the good folks at the RMT said “It’s time to get organised.”

Bella is this year’s TUC organisation award winner. She won this for her part in organising Churchill cleaners – made up of 40 nationalities – to stand on picket lines for 23 days in solidarity from Hastings to Kings Lynn.

A rally held at East Sussex College last Thursday evening by Hastings & District Trades Union Council under
the slogan Hastings Demands Better attracted a cast of prominent local speakers, including borough council leader Paul Barnett, local foodbank manager John Wales, debt centre manager Nick Warren and several union officials. The event was a precursor to an intended mass rally to be held in London on 18 June to demand an effective response from government to the rise in the cost of living.

Chair for the evening, Sam Gurney, who is Regional Secretary of the TUC, urged all people protesting and campaigning against austerity and poverty to make a common front. “None of them can win on their own”, he told the assembly. “These meetings… are about all of us – trade unions, community groups, charities and local politicians – coming together to deal with this government.”

In contrast to his emollient address to the cross-party council meeting the previous evening Cllr Barnett declared the issue to be “a class war”, invoked Robert Tressell, Ricky Tomlinson and Jeremy Corbyn, and pledged that he would fight to win “a better deal for the people of Hastings”.

Wales told the meeting that, people were more likely to die in Hastings now from lack of food and heating than they are from drink or drugs. The Government’s belated action (announced that day) in helping people with energy bills was welcome – “but it’s not enough, and it’s not over”.

Speakers from the RMT, GMB, PCS, NEU, Unite and Unison unions all urged support for collective action, local or national. Diane Ebanks of PCS said: “Those things we do have, we have because previous generations of workers struggled for them. We get what we need only by coming together and demanding. This is not identity politics. This is class struggle, and we need to win it.”