Tube workers support students - with cash, demo backing and call for general strike

Tube workers in the RMT union’s London Underground Engineering branch tonight passed full support for the student protests – and donated £250 to the Education Activist Network (EAN). The workers also called for the student protests to be part of wider and deeper resistance by workers, including a general strike.

The branch – which brings together engineers, track, maintenance and lift workers – heard from NUS executive member Mark Bergfeld and then voted unanimously for a motion which said:

• To encourage anyone who can to join the student protests and the NUS/UCU lobby of Parliament on Thursday 9 December and make it clear that workers will support the students in their fight for the right to education for all, not just those who can afford to pay.
• To back the march assembling at Malet Street at 12 noon.
• To support the Education Activist Network (EAN), a group that helped co-ordinate many of the protests and campaigns more widely for education to be free and properly funded.
• To encourage trade unionists to visit students in occupations at colleges and show solidarity.
• To send a motion to the RMT regional council and the national leadership calling on the union to support EAN and its campaign for universal free education.
• To send a motion to the regional council, the national leadership of the union and to the Trades Union Congress, to say that we should be harnessing the mood for a fightback by planning a general strike against cuts and austerity, as has happened in other countries in Europe.