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‘Working in rail is a battle from day one’
RMT young members' committee chair SARAH CUNDY speaks to Ben Chacko about the challenges facing young transport workers, public campaigning and training a new generation of union reps

SARAH CUNDY has three priorities for her year as chair of transport union RMT’s young members’ committee.

“The first is organising industrially — encouraging young members to become reps and become active in their workplace. We have a campaign on that regarding health and safety reps in particular because there aren’t many young safety reps — we could be facing a mass exodus of health and safety reps in the next 5-10 years because of the demographics. We’ve had some wins on that, we’ve gone from having about 50 young [under 35] health and safety reps nationally to about 80.

“Second, education. We run various education programmes throughout the year. We’ve got one in a couple of months at the AGM in Hull, we try to do a mini-day course at the Durham Miners’ Gala and we have a course with the Marx Memorial Library on political economy. We’re trying to bring back the young women’s course as well. Education provides young activists with better means of organising and political understanding.

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