Last week’s train strike by the left-wing RMT union heaped misery on Crawley’s rail passengers. This was the second strike out of a series of five that they announced in September with their next strike planned for next week. These strikes are in additional to the persistently high ‘sickness’ levels which have been disrupting trains for months.
Regardless of whether the RMT have a genuine grievance or not, nothing justifies this series of strikes and the impact they are having, particularly on people who have to get the train to get to work. The only way to resolve this dispute is by sensible negotiation.
In the area that Southern Rail covers, there are very few Labour-run Local Authorities, but these Labour Councils have a huge ability to influence their socialist comrades at the RMT, including the potential to get the RMT to call off their strikes. At last week’s Full Council meeting at Crawley Borough Council, I put forward the following Motion which all my Conservative colleagues voted for:
“On 22nd of September 2016, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and
Transport Workers (RMT) announced a series of rail strikes affecting
Southern Rail trains, in five blocks covering fourteen days. The strike times announced were as follows:
· 00:01 Tuesday 11 October to 23:59 Thursday 13 October
· 00:01 Tuesday 18 October to 23:59 Thursday 20 October
· 00:01 Thursday 3 November to 23:59 Saturday 5 November
· 00:01 Tuesday 22 November to 23:59 Wednesday 23 November
· 00:01 Tuesday 6 December to 23:59 Thursday 8 December
This Council condemns this series of strikes called by the RMT which will cause a major impact to Crawley rail passengers. Therfore the Council instructs the Chief Executive to write to the General Secretary of the RMT to convey the Council’s view and to ask the RMT to call off their strikes.”
Shamefully, Crawley’s Labour Councillors put politics before people and choose to support the strikes by voting against this Motion, meaning it was lost by 19 votes to 17. They hadn’t forgotten that the RMT donated £25,000 to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
26th October 2016