increase of 27.7 per cent is a total fraud.
The new basic is so embarrassingly low that even the tribunal had to dream up the idea of a new minimum earnings guarantee of £36.70. So a railman will be getting £1.65 plus £5.00 an increase of 22.1 per cent on the existing gross. And unis Is a larger percentage increase than any other grade will be getting.
For example, a grade B signalman at present gets a basic of £31.95 plus 14.40 Inresnold, giving a basic gross or £36.35. A 27.7 per cent increase gives an increase of £8.79, a real increase of £4.39 once the threshold is excluded. As a percentage of existing income this is equivalent to an increase of 12.1 per cent-when inflation is currentiv running at nearly tree umes tnat rate.
The deal says nothing about how the extra £5 to make the guaranteed minimum earnings' is to be made up, which probably means that overtime will have to be worked. The report also comes our against any orm of threshold payment to defend railworkers lving standards Despite this the white-collar Transport and salaried stalls Association nas The claim of the tribunal on railway workers' pay to have offered an The so-called 27.7 per cent increase includes £4.40 consolidated threshold payment. At present a railman (the (owest grade) gets £25.65 basic plus £4.40 threshold-a basic gross of £30.05. The offer of £6.05 includes the threshold, giving a new basic of £31.70-an increase in new money of only £1.65p!
the basis that diffetentials are maintained.
As for the National Union of Railwaymen, General Secretary Sid Weighell and President David Bowman want to accept the offer and will do all they can to fox moves towards strike action. They will argue for further 'negotiations with British Rail. Failing this they will probably go for an emergency union conference, rather than risk an immediate confrontation on the national executive.
The NUR bureaucracy has played straight into the hands of the tribunal, which is demanding sackings and fare mercases tune mura set nis year) to inance tne deal. iney argued their case solely in terms of parity and productivity. Since 1960 this type of policy has led to a 54.6 per cent cut in the number of signalmen alone.
The oller must be relected and replaced by a common claim for all the rail unions. Central to this is the financing of the industry. Already certain sections of the capitalist class, represented by The Economist magazine are calling for British Railways to be turned into an industrial holding which would lease out tracks to private combe drawing up plans for an integrated transport system which would include service the industry. A policy of no redundancies and no fare increases snou e be enrorced sacrifice railway workers' living standards in order to defend the remnants of the social contract. If a special conference is callea to avoid acuon, railway workers will have to turn it into a body to organise the fight for a higher claim, for a sliding scale of wages to defend any control over the running of the railways NEW IMG PUBLICATIONS the multinationals in Scotland; North the EEC.
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red weekly 5 june 1975