Keep Tyne & Wear Metro Public Campaign

RMT sets ballot timetable over privatisation threat to Metro jobs
A strike ballot of more than 250 RMT members employed by Nexus at Tyne and Wear Metro will be concluded by March 30. The union is urging members to vote for action in a dispute over the threat to jobs, pensions and conditions posed by moves to privatise the network’s operations. Bob Crow said: “Tyne and Wear’s transport executive is threatening to put the Metro’s operations into private hands but it has failed to provide us with the assurances we need that our members’ futures will be secure. We hope that even at this late stage Nexus will see sense and drop its completely unnecessary tendering process, but we have already learned the bitter lesson that rail workers, like service and safety, come a poor second when profit is involved. We have spent the last dozen years resisting attacks on rail workers’ jobs, pensions and conditions that are the direct result of privatisation, and without firm assurances from Nexus we have no option but to ballot for action to secure them.”
www.rmt.org.uk