Union heavyweight Bob Crow has been re-elected unopposed to serve as general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) until February 2012.
Crow received 131 nominations from RMT’s 225 branches for a second five-year term at the helm from February 2007. No other nominations were received.
Crow said: “It is the greatest honour to be able to serve RMT members as their general secretary, and I am grateful that they have given me the honour of serving a second term.
“The priorities remain: fight for jobs, and better pay and conditions at work; continue building RMT membership; campaign for public transport to be returned to the public sector; and fight for trade union rights fit for the 21st Century.”
RMT membership has grown from 56,000 when Crow became general secretary in 2002 to more than 75,000 today.
Born in 1961, Crow joined London Underground at 16 as a track worker, and became a member of the National Union of Railwaymen in May 1979.
By the early 1980s, he was elected as the senior shop steward, representing thousands of Tube infrastructure maintenance and renewal workers.
In 1984 he was awarded the National Union of Railwaymen’s youth award, and in 1992 he was elected to the national executive of the RMT. Two years later he became the youngest person ever to be elected as the union’s assistant general secretary.
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RMT president Tony Donaghey said this week: “I am delighted that one of my final duties as RMT president is to announce that Bob Crow has been re-elected.
“He has had the nerve to stand up without compromise for the rights and interests of RMT members and working people in general, and for that he has been vilified by the right-wing media – but he has kept every promise he made to the members.”
