Mick Lynch: Corruption is to blame for lack of progress in rail dispute

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The public should be furious at the corruption that is preventing an agreement on railway workers’ wages and conditions, Mick Lynch said, accusing Chancellor Jeremy Hunt of stalling negotiations.

The RMT general secretary told a press conference on Thursday: This negotiation and this dispute is one of the most corrupt set-ups you will ever see in business life in Britain.

The railroads don’t want to settle, can’t settle, and have no incentive to settle because they’re not losing money because the government is compensating them for lost revenue, with money from taxpayers.

When the public and the hospitality industry find out, they shouldn’t cry corruption. More than that, they’re screaming about Michelle Mone.

RMT workers will take industrial action around the Christmas period in an ongoing dispute. 48-hour strikes announced for December 13-14, December 16-17, and December 24-27

Lynch said the government was deliberately provoking rail strikes with paltry offers.

They might as well come in with a fish and slap me the chops with it and say, how do you like that? That’s what they do, he says.

At a select committee on Wednesday, Transport Secretary Mark Harper was asked whether 10 Downing Street had added a clause on implementing Driver Only Operation (DOO), to sabotage any potential deal .

This union will fall on the DOO issue, Lynch said.

It’s not just that they say, this [DOO] could be a consequence or a side effect, they say the RMT has to sign a thing saying there will be only one conductor and that will be the optimal mode of operating a train on this network. And they know I can never do it.

They do it deliberately because they want a strike. They want this image to pass at Christmas that organized workers are the enemies of this country.

Lynch suggested that Hunt influence the negotiations. He said: I talk to people who are not in control. Jeremy Hunts at the controls – you all know that.

Lynch also accused other departments of meddling in the dispute. The Rail Delivery Group – the member body representing rail operators – needs clearance from the Department of Transport to make changes to the offer. And they don’t get permission, because what’s happening at the DfT is they have to send a round to all the other departments and say, this is what we’re going to come up with. So the Treasury takes a look at it, obviously – the kingpin – number 10, can look at it. I don’t know if it goes that far, but they’re involved.

If you take one of the most important departments, obviously [it] is health. It’s not just because of his health, it’s because they have a million employees in the public sector.

We are therefore caught between an ideological position that they have and their own disposition towards public services.

Describing the wacky state of negotiations, Lynch said it was taking days and days and days to get answers. Lynch said it took Harper five days to send him a letter that was essentially a press release saying: I am a facilitator, not a negotiator.

The Department of Transport, he said, is not trusted by other departments in Whitehall.

Lynch said: I said to Mark Harper, you must reassert your independence as a ministry because everyone, employers, industry and Whitehall treats this ministry with contempt. It’s like a ministry of special measures. They don’t think they can handle this industrial relations dispute.

Commenting on the government’s proposals to roll out minimum service requirements in the public sector – restricting the strike rights of NHS workers, firefighters, teachers and border guards – Lynch said: This government, whenever it loses an argument, he changes the law.

So if people want to protest them, they say you’re not allowed to do that anymore. If people want to strike, they will say it is illegal.

We do everything within the law. And we have overcome all the obstacles they have encountered since 1980, on the Tebbits law. So what they do then is say “Well, we’ll change it again”.

They might as well say, “You have to quit and join AA” or something like that, because they don’t allow debate and they can’t win an argument about what’s going on in society.

People know this is an unfair and unequal society and unions right now – because of the vanilla flavor of Labor – are the best form of resistance to what is happening. So we must continue.

The Department of Transportation has been approached for comment.

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