I would guess this applies to many people. There is respect for the professionalism of ASLEF management, but considerable disgust with the RMT management. It's time for the rank and file members to oust their top team.
It seems to me that there are parallels with the situation being discussed here and that existing in the Labour Party up to the mid-1990s.
Until then Clause 4 of the Party’s constitution called for the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. It was adopted by the party in 1918 under very different social, political and economic circumstances. Although it did not expressly call for nationalistion this was the commonly accepted interpretation. In many people’s minds this made the party unelectable - partly due to the poor performance of nationalised industries and local government leading to the election of the Thatcher government in 1979. The ‘Winter of Discontent’, anyone?
Following earlier attempts in the 1980s, Tony Blair, after a struggle, managed to get the Clause 4 amended in 1995 removing the aim of common ownership and replacing it by a set of values which would remain constant even as society and the economy evolved; he then won three successive General Elections.
If the RMT is to survive as an effective trade union it too will have to face its ‘Clause 4’ moment as No. 4(b) in the RMT’s list of Objects call for it:
(b) to work for the supersession of the capitalist system by a socialistic order of society;
At a local and branch level such high-level aims and objects have little or no relevance, but they
do have a relevance to the high level management. They are one of the significant reasons that people try to reach executive committee level in the Union in the first place and they affect the way that the executive committee view or react to events.
The divide being commented on in this thread between the local levels and the executive committee will not be narrowed until the RMT amends 4(b) to remove this essentially political objective from its constitution. In my opinion such an objective has nothing to do with labour relations between employees (and their union) and their employer in negotiating pay rates or Terms and Conditions.
This is not an 'anti-union' diatribe, but a suggestion as to how the RMT can stay as an effective representative for a widely spread workforce running a 24 hour, 7 days a week business. With the best will in the world the business management cannot be aware of all the issues facing staff at every remote site at odd hours - an effective trade union is a necessity to ensure any and all such issues do not get overlooked.