Sadiq Khan's recent claims that he might have to shut down entire Tube lines - he mentioned the Bakerloo and Jubilee - if a new funding deal for TfL isn't secured definitely provoked a ripple of concern across the job, especially amongst those of us working on those lines. No-one wants to hear the man who chairs the board of your employer's parent company saying he might close your workplace.
Directly-employed LU staff are protected by a no-compulsory-redundancies agreement which means that, if there were line or station closures, we'd be redeployed to other locations. Outsourced workers don't have those protections, so who knows what their fate would be?
But in reality, we know that closing entire Tube lines is highly unlikely. It's hardly in the interests of the government to have the Jubilee Line, which serves London's major financial centres, closed down. What's really going on is that Khan is using the media to jockey with the Department for Transport as the 11 December deadline for the last round of funding approaches.
On a certain level, that's reasonable. But it's a shame he's chosen to base his position on threats of cuts and closures rather than telling the Tories: "no, I won't make cuts. I'll continue running all TfL services at full capacity, dipping into the company's reserves and slashing senior management pay if necessary, to ensure Londoners continue to reserve the full public transport service they need and deserve. And I won't cut jobs or restructure staff pensions, and if workers strike against those threats, I'll side with them."
That would provoke something of a political crisis over public transport governance, and could lead to the DfT moving to take over the running of TfL directly. That threat will undoubtedly be used as an excuse by Khan and others who support his approach as a reason for not taking a more radical stance. But that threat could be countered by a mass working-class campaign, led by transport workers' unions but pulling in other unions and community groups, to defend public transport in London.
Khan can either continue to horse-trade with the Tories, going along with their demands to make cuts to workers' conditions in exchange for inadequate, sporadic funding, or he can make a stand. It's time he picked a side.
