Mick Lynch: the veteran trade unionist leading rail walkouts

The largest rail and Tube strike in nearly 30 years is underway as union boss Mick Lynch leads tens of thousands of rail workers in a walkout at Network Rail and other train operators in a dispute over pay and working conditions.

The general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) represents more than 50,000 members striking today and over two more days this week.

Rail workers are being “robbed of wages” and Network Rail is offering “nowhere near” the pay demanded by staff as inflation hits its highest levels in four decades, Lynch has said.

But, according to The Times, industry figures “say it is Lynch and his colleagues’ unwillingness to give up generous working practices dating back to the 1950s” that has led to the breakdown in talks between the two sides, leading to widespread industrial action on the railways.

Electrician to ‘veteran trade unionist’

The “veteran trade unionist” took over the “militant” RMT union last year, just months after taking sick leave from his role as assistant general secretary, citing an “intolerable, toxic atmosphere” among the union leadership, said The Times.

Lynch grew up as one of five siblings to Irish parents on a council estate in Paddington, west London and described his upbringing to The Guardian as being in “rented rooms that would now be called slums, [with] the old tin bath and shared toilet with other families”. He left school at 16 to become an electrician, before moving into construction as the engineering sector “dwindled”, said the paper.

But after becoming involved in a new union, Lynch found himself “blacklisted”. The paper explained that a “conspiracy among major construction companies” meant that workers involved in union activism and strikes were barred from being hired with many then being out of work for years. 

“When you tell your friends about a blacklist, they say it’s bollocks. I knew I was blacklisted but you can’t prove it, because it was all secret,” he told the paper.

His search for work took him to the railways and he joined Eurostar in 1993, where he “founded and built up its RMT branch before climbing the rungs within the union”, said The Times. 

‘Militant’ leadership

When Lynch became head of the RMT union in May 2021, some in the rail industry were “quietly relieved”. They regarded him as “competent, practical and across the detail” with some even suggesting he is “in RMT terms, a centrist”, said The Guardian.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/people/957135/who-is-mick-lynch-rmt