Page 27 - Bob Crow News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

In the late 1990s, plans to outsource track maintenance on the London Underground were being pushed through by the government. Workers at one depot responded by forming a new workplace group, both inside and outside the existing union, the RMT. This pamphlet charts the highs and lows of the Workmates collective, highlighting their successes and failures, their radically democratic organising method and their creative forms of direct action. We hope it can provide an inspiration to other workers frustrated with the limits of the existing workplace organisations.

First, our emergency motion on rail safety. Recently, the companies responsible for the Hatfield crash got away with murder when Britain's existing piss-weak corporate manslaughter law failed to nail them. On September 6th, the courts added insult to death and injury by clearing Network Rail and Balfour Beatty bosses.

What follows is the text of a speech written by a Vestas worker for delivery at trade union and environmental movement meetings, edited only slightly. It gives an excellent insight into the background of the struggle, and its wider political significance. Taken from the Save Vestas blog. Hello there – my name is Matt and I’ve come today to speak about a little factory called St. Cross on the Isle of Wight – otherwise known as Vestas; you may have heard about it before…

Brilliant. Network Rail have made big bucks, have dipped their short arms into their deep pockets to fish out a tiny bit to share with the workers - and have excluded the maintenance workers in the Grayrigg area and the Scottish signallers who Network Rail forced to take strike action earlier this year!

An Employment Tribunal has forced South West Trains to give train driver Greg Tucker his old job back, two years after demoting him to ticket inspector on a trumped-up speeding charge. The company has also been forced to repay all Greg's lost earnings and a substantial additional award. Greg's "offence" was a minor speeding violation, which posed no material threat to anybody. But the reason Greg was targeted was because he is a trade union activist and campaigning socialist.