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Mick Lynch is back schooling journalists as the RMT goes on strike

Mick Lynch is back at it. The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union leader has attacked the government as rail workers go on strike. Lynch accused the government of wasting millions on a ‘futile war’ with the unions.

Lynch wrote a withering letter to the government over their conduct:

There is further strike action on the railways on Friday because workers, passengers and taxpayers are being asked to pay the price for the government’s disastrous mismanagement of the economy and public transport.

As ever, he joined picketing workers on the frontline:

Tory chaos

In his letter to the government, Lynch put the blame firmly on the Tories:

Rather than deliver a plan to improve public transport and the economy, we have seen three Prime Ministers preside over a year of chaos since the first strike action in June 2022.

He also pointed out that in other nations in the union, there had been less antagonism. Mainly because the English Tories were viciously anti-worker:

In contrast, there is no strike action on railways controlled by the Scottish and Welsh governments because these governments have adopted a fair and less ideological approach to industrial relations.

Elsewhere, Lynch ran rings around an interviewer with typical style:

Futile war

The Tories have been waging a futile war against workers, Lynch said. And the cost was being borne by the taxpayer:

Instead of working to end the dispute, amidst a cost-of-living crisis it appears to have no idea how to tackle, the UK government has spent the last year squandering billions of pounds on a futile war against the rail unions, all in the name of delivering reforms that passengers do not want.

Lynch even put a figure on it:

The cumulative cost of this disastrous strategy is now estimated at £5 billion.

And the RMT leader spelt it out in another press interview. If it wasn’t for the Tories’ anti-worker views, the issue could be settled in days:

Workers’ success

Speaking at a picket at London’s Euston Station, Lynch said the workers had enjoyed a lot of success against the bosses:

We’ve pushed them [rail bosses] back on all the stuff they wanted to do – they wanted to make thousands of our people redundant, they wanted to shut every booking office in Britain, restructure our engineering workers, [and] cut the catering service.

However, he added:

What we haven’t got is a pay deal, we haven’t got any guarantees on our members’ futures, but we have stopped them doing the worst aspects of their proposals and their ideas.

And in another media interview as the strikes launched, the union leader made a fool of a presenter who suggested an app could do the job of rail workers:

Once again, Lynch and the RMT are leading the way for working people. With the Labour Party more concerned with flopping about uselessly and draping itself in the Union Jack, it’s down to organised workers to fight for what they need.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Endim8, cropped to 1910 x 1000, licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0.

By Joe Glenton

This post was originally published on Canary.