Rail union leaders take their message to commuters and the media at London’s Euston Station this morning.

Rail fares are continuing to outstrip inflation and wages, even in times of recession. Our research has shown that from January 2008, rail fares have increased over 26%, three times faster than average wages.

Now they’re set to rise again, with a 3.9% increase in January, the tenth straight year of inflation-busting rail fare rises.  This, being an average figure, masks the more eye watering hikes you’ll see on some fares, including up to 6.5% on some season tickets. 

In the New Year, commuters on many lines in the South East will be facing season tickets touching £5k. But it is not just isolated to the commuter belt around London. A season ticket from Ludlow to Hereford will be just shy of £2k, a jump of over 5%.

That’s why Action for Rail activists have been out and about at stations around the country this morning, joining passengers to let MPs, the government and the train operators know that passengers can’t take any more.

Campaigners handed out these ‘Christmas card’ flyers to commuters at stations around the country.

Rail operators are keen to point out that fare increases largely go towards paying the increasing cost of running the rail. The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) claim just 3p in every £1 of fare revenue goes to train operator profit.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Much of the cost escalation in the industry driving fare rises is a result of the dysfunctional and fragmented system that privatisation brought about. Research by Transport for Quality of Life shows that £1.2bn a year is wasted on the various costs associated with privatisation, from rail company profits and dividend payments, to all the transaction costs, legal fees, duplication and waste that comes with it.

They calculate that eliminating this waste and investing that £1.2bn back into the industry could result in an 18% fare cut across the board.

The government acknowledges that costs need to come down in the industry. What is their solution? Let train operators have more freedom to cut services, close ticket offices, remove staff from trains and stations and have more say over how they can cut costs in critical safety work like maintenance and track renewal.

This blank cheque to the private train companies shows where the government’s priorities lie. Their craven approach to the train operators is shown by their refusal to consider alternatives to franchising despite the clear failings of the model. And why they were so keen to hand a very agreeable contract to Virgin to run West Coast for another two years.

These are critical times for rail. The government are vulnerable to the demands of angry rail passengers in marginal seats around the country. There are franchises up for renewal. For the first time in years there is genuine debate in media and political circles about the case for public ownership. We need to ensure that we use this period to effect some real change.

For more information on our campaign visit actionforrail.org

Action For Rail coalition campaigners outside Waterloo station.

These are pivotal times for the UK’s railways, for those who use rail services and those who work in the industry. Multiple franchises are up for grabs in the next three years and the government and train operators are looking at ways to slash £3.5bn costs from the industry.

The government is unsurprisingly backing the train companies, giving longer franchises with more commercial freedom to hike up fares, cut less profitable services, close ticket offices and shed thousands of staff from train and stations.  At the same time, Network Rail is being broken up and possibly sold off or placed under the management of train operators through regional business alliances.  Thousands of safety critical maintenance, renewals and signal staff face the chop.

The scale of these challenges requires a bold response from those representing rail workers and rail passengers.

Action for Rail brings together the TUC, ASLEF, RMT, TSSA and Unite together to campaign against these proposals and to promote the alternative of a fairer, more efficient, integrated national railway under public ownership.

Through combined funding, the campaign has established its own jointly badged website, campaign materials and established co-ordinated days of action, mobilising hundreds of activists at rail stations across the UK.

Through working together, Action for Rail has maximised our media impact with enormous coverage for our days of action, such as today’s activity on rail fares with friends from Campaign for Better Transport, Climate Rush and Bring Back British Rail.

From the BBC to the Daily Mail and key regional press like The Journal, this coverage has helped us bring home the message that passengers and staff are paying the price to fund the increasing costs of privatised rail.

We’ll be carrying on the campaign through on-line lobbying activities such as this action on fare hikes aimed at MPs.

Find out more about Action for Rail by visiting us at www.actionforrail.org and following us on Facebook and Twitter.

The poll was conducted by recruitment consultants, Badenoch & Clark, of 1,000 private sector ‘office workers’. It found that around 55% opposed, with only 14% ‘strongly opposing’ the strikes. This figure increased for men over the age of 55 but younger workers and women seemed more sympathetic.

What this research tells us is:

• While there’s an entrenched minority strongly opposed, a bell curve analysis suggests that the vast majority occupy a centre ground where opinion can shift.
• 45% already do not describe themselves as opposed even moderately against the strikes.
• Only 1 in 10 women polled were strongly opposed.

Given that the poll was concentrated on those wokers you would anticipate to be least organised (white collar, private sector, service industry) and likely to be anti-union, these figures suggest that there is all to play for in the battle over public sector pensions.

On Monday, we learned about the RMT’s deal with Network Rail protecting their members from compulsory redundancies while delivering a very satisfactory pay rise.  All this in the face of a hostile employer, who let’s not forget attempted to use legal action to cow the union, and a transport industry threatened by cuts and job losses all round. 

Then today, we learned that Unite had reached a deal with Jaguar Land Rover keeping car production going at three major UK plants, protecting thousands of jobs at the plants and JLR’s supply chains and, again, delivering a decent pay rise.

In their separate ways, both deals show the lasting strength and relevance of trade unions and the massive role they have to play not only in supporting working people but also boosting jobs and growth.

The youth blog comes with a redesign, new functionalities such as Facebook and Twitter sharing as well as a special campaign section.

The brochure is a best practice guide on organising young people and is aimed at informing young people in trade unions about the wide range of work covered by trade unions at the international, regional and national level.

The brochure is available for download on the campaign section of the blog.

If you would like to receive printed copies for your union members, please contact me at mdykes@tuc.org.uk

Feel free to cut’n'paste to whatever social network sites you use.

Looking forward to getting the details of the campaign as the ITUC’s own youth officer, Phillipe Gousenberger, addresses the TUC Young Members Conference which takes place in Birmingham on 26th – 28th March.

Met some great union reps and officers, some of  them from the bakers’ union BFAWU who are organising the often low paid, part time and largely female workforce at Gregg’s.  

Two young women in particular from Gregg’s described the problems facing organising in that sector but also demonstrated that results can be achieved when its members themselves taking the lead in recruiting and organising and picking the issues to campaign on.

It was also interesting talking to representatives from the community and youth workers section of Unite.  Their point was that there’s plenty to be learned from youth work professionals on engaging young people.  There’s years of accumulated experience there.  Expertise that we haven’t been tapping into enough in the past. 

I think some further work with our youth worker colleagues is a must.

Youth unemployment stands at record levels, demand for apprenticeships and places in higher education is outstripping supply and too many young workers find themselves in low paid, low skilled, vulnerable jobs in the sharp end of our service industries.

As a response to this trade unions in the UK are uniting around the TUC’s Next Generation Campaign, making the case for a better deal for young people but also showing what role we can play in supporting, organising and developing young people at work and the wider community.

Unions are signing their names up to the Next Generation Accord which sets out our plans for tackling unemployment and vulnerable work among young people.

Contact mdykes@tuc.org.uk for more information.

Change in any organisation can be a painful process but what struck me at the event today was the real energy and appetite there was for having a proper look at what our unions are doing, how they represent, include and empower their members and the best ways to adapt and change to improve things.

And, yes, change has come and real progress made in a number of unions.  The CWU’s youth empowerment strategy and the NUT ‘Hearth’ project are just two dynamic ways unions have improved resources and given a voice to previously excluded members. 

For some more information on UMF projects, check out this report we have just jointly published with BIS.

Another thing that is striking is what a productive and value for money government initiative this has been.  For very little outlay, the government has enabled unions to improve services to potentially millions of members, enhancing the positive role that unions play in the workplace and supporting thousands of businesses across the UK.

If only some of the short sighted snipers among Tory ranks could remove their prejudices for a minute to grasp this.

I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days last week with David Begg and Jack O’Connor of ICTU who did a brilliant job in illustrating the devastating impact that Brian Cowen’s government is inflicting on working people and trade unions through its policy of immediate and severe cuts in public spending.

The current Irish government has wedded itself to deep public sector cuts, largely funded through attacks on public sector workers’ pay and pensions.   A move motivated, it seems, as much by an attempt to cut workers pay as a devaluation strategy as by deficit reduction.  All of this implemented with blanket support from a compliant media, implacably hostile to trade unions. 

According to ICTU this amounts to nothing less than “a savage attack on working people” which will “only stimulate unemployment”.

Through turning its back on dialogue with the Irish trade unions, the government has effectively brought to an end over 20 years of social partnership arrangements.   In the absence of partnership, ICTU’s strength must now be drawn exclusively from its campaigning and organising work.

Grim times but the ICTU leadership see opportunity in the situation, with campaigns there to be won.  We wish David and his colleagues all the best and hope that we continue to learn from each other as we potentially face similar challenges in coming years.