Railworkers set to take on Mercury
Socialist Organiser1984 1984-01-12Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 20 →
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BRITISH Rail management plans to run a cablelaying train from Chesterfield to Sheffield in the early hours of Monday morning, 16th.
The cable is the first part of the fibre optic cables planned to make up the Mercury communications network, the first private competitor to British Telecom.
It is NUR policy to oppose Mercury and logically, therefore, to prevent the train Dawber running.
All well and good = but not as well as it might appear. Opposition is not because Mercury represents privatisation. Not because it threatens the jobs of British Telecom workers. Not because it is an attack on the public sector.
Opposition is because it is to be installed and maintained by private contractors and run by a firm with which the NUR has no negotiating rights.
The Signal and Telecoms (S&T) department of BR is to use 10% of the capacity of these cables and this will also threaten its members' jobs which rely present conventional methods.
This is not the basis for building any generalised opposition to Tory attacks on our jobs and services but without that generalised opposition we have little hope of taking on multi-million pound enterprises backed to the hilt by this government.
Despite union policy the NUR leaders will not officially call for action. Frightened and cowed by the High Court declarations that the POEU's action against Mercury was political, and therefore illegai, the NUR is giving no official lead.
The train is at present stabled Tinsley marshalling yard, just the edge of Sheffield.
Tinsley NUR branch have informed management that any guard rostered for that train will refuse to work it. Every indication is that that is understood and accepted by all members.
So management have . a choice. They either back down (but with the losses that Mercury already claims to have sustained because of delays as a result of POEU action that's not very likely) or they send the guard home.
In that case, Tinsley Yard will be shut down and extension of picketing could soon bring the rest of Sheffield area railworkers out.