“The government rushed through its Minimum Service Levels Act at the end of last year. It has nothing to do with providing a minimum service to the public and everything to do with providing maximum problems for trade unions.”
By Mick Whelan, ASLEF General Secretary
Strikes, they say, don’t work. Well, that’s what the Tory government – and right-wing commentators in papers like The Sun, Daily Mail, and Daily Telegraph – would like you to believe. But the truth is that strikes do work. They always have. And they always will. That’s why employers – and the Tory governments that stand behind the bosses – don’t like them.
Our dispute with 16 train operating companies began back in June 2022 when we first balloted our members for industrial action because they hadn’t had a pay rise since April 2019.
It was only six and a half months later – and, more pertinently, after six one-day strikes – that the train companies finally made us an offer. The Secretary of State for Transport – Grant Shapps, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, and Mark Harper have all walked through the revolving door at the Department for Transport in the last two years – and the Rail Minister – whether Wendy Morton, Kevin Foster, or Huw Merriman – kept parroting the party line that ‘ASLEF should come to the table’. Well, we did. But the table was bare. The companies put nothing on the table until we showed our collective determination to win a rise by going on strike.
It’s that solidarity – collective action – which employers hate. Because, at heart, many bosses are Victorian mill owners who would like to hire and fire as they see fit. They love the idea of the foreman walking along the wharf in the morning saying, ‘You, you, and you are hired. There’s no work for the rest of you.’
They don’t like the ‘burden’, as they see it, of employing men and women. Of paying proper wages. Taxes. National insurance and pensions. They love the gig economy, false self-employment, and zero hours contracts which the Labour Party in its New Deal for Working People has promised to ban. Bosses like to claim that ‘Zero hours contracts offer workers flexibility.’ But not decent terms and conditions, employment rights, or proper, and secure, jobs.
Because our strikes were successful – in bringing the railway to a standstill – the government rushed through its Minimum Service Levels Act at the end of last year. It has nothing to do with providing a minimum service to the public and everything to do with providing maximum problems for trade unions. Threatening us with fines if we put a foot wrong and, fundamentally, trying to undermine the effectiveness of industrial action and our ability to protect our members.
That’s why we fought so hard – and, so far, so successfully – against the implementation of MSLs on the railway. When LNER said it intended to issue work notices to members, for the day we were due to strike, we immediately put on another five days of strikes – more industrial action, as we have promised, to ensure the same effect – which prompted the company to see sense and back down.
We did it not just for train drivers, but for every worker here in Britain. Because we don’t believe in forced labour. We believe in the right to strike. And we know – as this Tory government knows – that strikes are effective.
Earlier this month, the train operating companies reached out to us for ‘talks about talks’ to try to resolve our pay dispute. They would not have done that if we had not taken industrial action. Yes, that’s right. Strikes work.
- Mick Whelan was elected as the General Secretary of ASLEF in 2011 and has spent 40 years on the railway, and 40 years as an active trade unionist.
- You can follow ASLEF – the Train Drivers’ Union on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and follow Mick Whelan on Twitter/X.
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