On Thursday 28th February, workers at STM security group were out on strike due to victimisation and abhorrent conditions in the workplace. STM, a private firm and sub-contractor of Transport for London (TFL) and London Overground Rail, is responsible for providing safety and security on the London Overground line. This example of workers at STM shows the reality of what happens when public services are privatised and outsourced: conditions are driven to rock-bottom and those who raise concerns are bullied out of their jobs.
On Thursday 28th February, workers at STM security group were out on strike due to victimisation and abhorrent conditions in the workplace. STM, a private firm and sub-contractor of Transport for London (TFL) and London Overground Rail, is responsible for providing safety and security on the London Overground line. This example of workers at STM shows the reality of what happens when public services are privatised and outsourced: conditions are driven to rock-bottom and those who raise concerns are bullied out of their jobs.
Talking to Socialist Appeal supporters at their protest outside of Camden Road station (following on from a protest earlier in the day outside the TFL headquarters), the security workers explained the background to the strike. These workers have been employed with STM for three-and-a-half years without a contract. During this time, STM – a private security firm who received outsourced work from London Overground Rail Operations Ltd (LOROL) – have attempted to push through changes to terms and conditions without any agreement, including the deprivation of basic needs and rights such as sick pay, holiday entitlements, pay rises, and uniforms.
The STM workers on the protest in Camden are furious at conditions they have been forced to put up with. According to one worker:
“We have no facilities: no toilets; no mess room, no drinking taps, no kettle, no microwave. All we have is this tiny outside cabin, which is smaller than a prison cell. Convicted criminals have better conditions than us.”
Faced with such deplorable conditions, many of the SMT staff on the London Overground joined the RMT – Britain’s largest transport union – in July 2012 in order to get organised, seek advice and struggle for an improvement in their situation. However, those who joined the RMT soon found themselves the victims of bullying and harassment by STM management.
The RMT have been negotiating with London Overground on behalf of the security workers in order to end the outsourcing of travel safety work and to bring it back in-house. However, the STM and LOROL management have played a duplicitous role, as the RMT report on their website:
“Back in December, RMT suspended a campaign of strike action by STM staff to allow the negotiating team to begin talks with London Overground, with a view to bringing the Travel Safe Officer work back in-house. Nearly three months later the fact is that despite the promise of talks, LOROL has refused to meet with RMT on this issue. It is now clear to the union that STM and LOROL deliberately mislead RMT, to stop the strike action in the run up to Christmas.
“Meanwhile, management at STM still have a cavalier attitude towards bullying and harassment and are refusing to address the concerns of our members in a proper and professional manner. The Executive of RMT has therefore decided to call further strike action to force management to honour their commitments, call off the campaign of harassment and address the issues in the workplace.”
This latest dispute once again shows the brutal effects of outsourcing and privatisation, which is used as a tool to drive down wages, attack terms and conditions, and break up any organised resistance to such assaults. As with many other areas of industry and public services, those who attempt to use their basic human right to organise and protest by becoming active members of trade unions are victimised, bullied, and harassed.
All of this is the logical result of austerity, which chips away at public service budgets and forces corners to be cut through outsourcing and privatisation. Broken up, isolated, and atomised, workers at such private firms are easier targets for attacks on wages, terms, and conditions. Nevertheless, the militancy and organisation of the STM workers shows the potential in terms of fighting back against outsourcing and its effects.
The RMT’s call for these services to be brought back in-house is correct, and must be part of a broader demand for the return of all privatised services across the public sector. In turn, this must be linked to the call for the re-nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, such as the railways, and the public ownership of all so-called “public” transport, such as the networks of buses in London and other cities.
The leaders of the labour movement must take up such demands as part of the wider struggle against austerity and for socialist policies. After several years of huge demonstrations and strikes across the public and private sector, the time has come for the TUC leaders to call a 24-hour general strike, topple the Coalition, and begin the struggle for a socialist transformation of society. As the STM security staff stated in their leaflet to passers-by:
“The struggle is on and day by day we are getting frustrated and disappointed; but we are still in high morale. We won’t surrender until we get something to secure our future. The slavery should go and rights should be given.”
