Mick Lynch

RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch delivers a talk in Wigan to discuss the proposed closure of railway ticket offices

Transcript

00:00 Hello I'm Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT and I'm in Wigan tonight to talk to a public

00:04 meeting about the station de-staffing and the ticket office closures. The government have got

00:09 plans to close very many if not all of our ticket offices and that means for people in Wigan,

00:16 Atherton and Hindley that they'll lose staff on their stations. The government is claiming

00:22 that this will mean that people will come out from behind the ticket office and be able to serve

00:26 their local needs on the platforms. We know that's not true because what they're going to do is get

00:32 rid of 2,300 jobs which is a vast proportion of the jobs in the system and many of our members

00:38 will lose the jobs as a result and the service simply won't be there for disabled people,

00:43 women travelling alone, people with sight impairments or hearing impairments or people

00:48 who just want assistance travelling about the system. It's vitally important that the people

00:53 of Wigan and the surrounding area get behind our campaign, that they respond to the consultation

00:58 which is now running to September the 1st which we've had extended and they're being joined in

01:04 this right across the country from Scotland through Lancashire down into the rest of England right

01:10 down to the south west. I've been into meetings in Berwick, in Scotland, in Penzance, in the

01:15 Midlands and all over the country where people are up in arms because they're sick and tired of their

01:20 public services being diluted and in many towns in this area I'm sure you've already lost some pubs,

01:27 you've lost your banks, you've lost your post offices and stations are a real hub for the

01:32 community. So we want to maintain these services and we want you to respond and support your

01:37 railway workers and support this campaign in order to save our ticket office situation.

01:43 Just in terms of the bigger strike, how it?

01:46 And in regards to the national strike, this is all part of the campaign because what we're going

01:50 to see across our services on Avante and on Norford are cutbacks to many of the services,

01:56 so that includes catering, it could go into train crew and of course in the engineering grades where

02:01 people are looking after your rolling stock. They're going to implement cuts and we've got

02:05 to make sure that we resist these cuts so that we have a properly funded and public railway that

02:11 serves the people of the the North West, the people of Wigan and is running their interests

02:16 rather than the profits of the train operating companies.