RMT - Fighting for a Better Ferries

One of Britain's most radical trade unions held a protest today in Portsmouth against the exploitation of Ukrainian seafarers by Condor Ferries. The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (AKA the RMT) are protesting against the exceptionally low wages of Ukrainian contract workers on Condor's ships.

According to the RMT, these workers are being paid as little as £2.46 an hour while working a 12-hour day - the union isn't being hyperbolic when they describe it as a "poverty wage". Twenty years after the National Minimum Wage Act (one of the Blair government's few substantial achievements), this is still a problem up and down the country, with RMT saying that a "vast majority" of the 87,000 ratings workers across the UK are paid less than the National Minimum Wage - as RMT's General Secretary, Mick Cash, said, "With wages like that it is no wonder that between 1980 and 2016 the number of UK Ratings fell by over 60%".

You'd think that with 81% customer dissatisfaction from Channel Islanders in 2016, Condor would be investing in their workers. Apparently, filling the pockets was deemed more important than paying the people working 12 hours a day at sea.

One of the RMT's demands, the recognition of the union to collectively bargain for seafarer ratings, is particularly important, perhaps even more so than than the demand for ratings to be paid a living wage. The RMT have Condor's workers in experienced and effective hands - as the union representing the vast majority of railway workers on the London Underground, they have built a reputation for a confrontational but effective attitude that has fought for well-paying and secure jobs on the Tube whilst wages fell and fell all around them - under Bob Crow, the union's previous General Secretary, the union's membership soared from around 57,000 in 2002 to 80,000 in 2014, whilst the wages of London Tube drivers actually rose to £52,000 (nearly twice the minimum wage). As Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London, noted, "The only working-class people who still have well-paid jobs in London are [RMT] members". These days, their efforts are directed against Southern Rail's attempts to sacrifice safety and jobs for the sake of profit by transitioning to driver-only operated trains. RMT is a union which employers should fear, and with the ongoing stevedore strikes in France, Condor can hardly afford to get bolshy with the unions.

Let's hope the management take heed.