RMT Leans On TUC For Coordinated Action Against Cuts

From the RMT website today:

Transport Union leader Bob Crow today issued a call for an emergency meeting of the Trade Union Congress to be convened as "soon as is practically possible" to map out a co-ordinated campaign of industrial and political action to fightback against plans to attack jobs, pay and pensions that will be unveiled in the emergency budget on Tuesday.

RMT has also reacted angrily to reports that David Cameron will be invited to address the TUC in September with Bob Crow warning that his union "will lead a walk out of delegates that would leave the Prime Minister with an empty hall to talk to. "

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary, said today:

"This weekend David Cameron has launched a full-frontal assault on the trade union movement on a scale which is unprecedented since Margaret Thatcher's Government set out to smash the National Union of Mineworkers.

"It could not be clearer that the ConDem administration are setting out to drive down pay, working conditions and pensions. When someone's winding up to give you a kicking you have a clear choice - you can either take them on right from the off or you can roll over and hope that they go away. RMT is calling on the trade union movement to start the fight back right here, right now before Cameron and Clegg have had a chance to pull their boots on.

"This is not the time for talking, it's the time for action. We need an emergency meeting of the Trade Union Congress to co-ordinate the political and industrial action that we will need to take to take as a united movement to drive back the ConDem attack on our members."

The repulsive idea that David Cameron might be allowed anywhere near this year's TUC Congress in Manchester came up at the end of last week but seems to have been largely ignored by the corporate media. The Agence France-Presse report quotes a press officer, but there is nothing on the TUC's website.

It all starts to look like an attempt by TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber to head off demands from two directions - the latest class war rhetoric from the CBI, who want even more draconian anti-strike laws, and a growing number of unions seeking active resistance to the ConDem government. I know the TUC has spent years cosying up to ministers but if Barber thinks this will work with an instinctive Thatcherite like Cameron, when it barely achieved measurable results with Labour in power, he is even bigger a fool that I thought.