LT Equalities

LU likes to pay lip service to its commitment to equalities, but right across the job, local managers are only to keen to pick on disabled workers who they dehumanisingly view as obstacles and drains on resources.

In a variety of locations, especially on stations, we’re hearing reports of disabled workers, who are perfectly able to do their jobs with reasonable adjustments in place, being told the company can no longer “accommodate” or “sustain” them.

The message, more or less explicitly stated depending on the individual manager, is fairly obvious: LU sees disabled workers as a burden and a drain on its budget, and would prefer to replace them with someone who didn’t require workplace adjustments. So much for the company’s commitment to equality

Those of us who are disabled workers ourselves need to organise to defend our rights. For non-disabled workers, wherever our disabled workmates are being picked on this way, we need to fight back - up to and including via industrial action. This is a matter of principle.

TfL has partnered with “mindfulness” app Headspace to give staff a free subscription. Headspace’s guided meditation programmes are meant to help us deal with workplace stress.

It’s a nice gesture, but it rings a little hollow when you consider Occupational Health counselling services have been slashed as part of “Transformation”. Despite frequent articles in Off The Move patting themselves on the back for how enlightened they are about mental health, LU still repeatedly put pressure on workers off sick with stress or other mental health issues to come back before we’re ready, and fails to make adequate adjustments for us when we are at work.

The main drivers of workplace stress are factors for which our bosses are substantially to blame. Cuts and de-staffing means fewer of us are doing more work, with increasingly fatigue-inducing shift patterns. A few sessions with Headspace isn’t going to fix this. Cutting the working week and employing hundreds more staff might help.

We have a grim sense of inevitability that at someone’s case conference in the not-too-distant future, we’ll hear a manager saying “no, I can’t accommodate your request for reduced hours, a seated role, flexible working, or time off work... but have you tried Headspace?”

Rather than trying to mollify us with a free app, why not take real steps to make our workplaces less stressful?

Did you know your period costs you less if you work in a head office building?

For those of us that need to purchase sanitary products whilst at work, it has come to light that machines provided in female staff toilets charge different rates depending on where you work.

For example, if you work at Palestra it costs 50p compared to on tube stations where the cost varies between £1 and £2.

The company has “assured” us that prices across the network are being “standardised” to £1, but Tubeworker believes these products should be provided for free. In fact we believe there is a much bigger debate to be had.

For those of us that have periods, easy access to wash facilities and free or affordable sanitary products are critical to ensuring dignity at work. Disciplining someone for taking time off work for having a period is also immeasurably wrong and something we should be rallying against. The lack of female reps in senior positions is a major reason why these issue don’t get enough attention and we hope you think so too!

Here are three simple things we can do help:

1) Raise this issue with your local reps and demand that local management provide sanitary products for free out of their own budget. This already happens in some local areas.

2) Educate yourself about the issues women face in the work place, do your own research and speak to us.

3) Ask your local rep to do an audit of toilet and mess facilities, speak to staff and get their views on what barriers might be in the way and that make it difficult to have a period in an operational environment.

Around International Women's Day, 8th March, LUL's intranet and company magazine, On the Move, featured women who are 'bucking the trend' by working in male-dominated roles - technical officer, service control manager, track maintenance.

But why are women still a minority in LUL when we are 51% of London's population?

In 2016, TfL commissioner, Mike Brown set TfL the target of reflecting the capital's own diversity by 2020. It is failing miserably. In the most recent stats available (2017), women were 23.4% of TfL's workforce and only 17.1% at LUL - 15.6% in operational grades. The percentage of women at LUL, particularly in operational grades, has fallen since 2016 - perhaps as women have been squeezed out during Fit for the Future.

When they are released, we expect TfL's 2019 figures to be even more damning because they will show the impact of TfL's Transformation program, which cut jobs in traditionally female-dominated areas, such as administration.

That women are such a minority in an organisation that boasts of diversity speaks of a deeply sexist culture and a discriminatory work environment that concedes too little to our caring and life commitments outside work.

Another month, another edition of On The Move prominently featuring mental health issues. We're glad LU is giving a platform to discussions about mental health, but words are not enough. Often, the message doesn't seem to filtering down to the shop floor.

Almost all union reps, and far too many members, will have had direct experience of being involved in case conferences or other attendance-related meetings where the manager's attitude to mental health amounts to a thinly veiled "pull yourself together". All too common are demands for fixed time-frames for being able to return to full duties when we've been off with a mental health related issue, as if we can say, "yes, I'll be cured of depression or anxiety in two weeks."

Within an increasingly corporate culture based on austerity budgets, our employer sees us as numbers on spreadsheet to make sure stations stay open, trains are driven, projects are worked on, and targets are hit. As much as it likes to claim it's taking a sensitive and constructive attitude to mental health, actually giving us the time and support we need to manage our mental health problems is all too often sacrificed on the altar of "business needs".

And this is to say nothing of the wider reality that the general way in which many managers treat their staff is itself a factor in damaging our mental health, leading to wider problems.

We'll be more inclined to take the On The Move articles seriously when we see this culture changing on the ground.

Sexual harassment affects huge numbers of women workers, including on LU. We must organise to stop it.

What is sexual harassment?

In law it is “unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of violating someone’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”.

This ranges from jokes about a person’s body to inappropriate touching to propositions for sex. Some people are unaware that their behaviour could be classed as sexual harassment; you might think, “it was only a joke” or, “I was just paying a compliment”. But just because you didn’t intend to sexually harass someone doesn’t mean that you didn’t. The “effect” on the recipient matters. It’s about how it feels on the receiving end (see image).

Is it just women who experience sexual harassment?

Harassment in the Workplace” report states that in Europe women are three times more likely than men to experience sexual harassment and that perpetrators are overwhelmingly male.

Sexual harassment is a product and a part of this sexist society in which women have not yet won equality at work, at home, in popular culture and almost every strand of life.

Is it just about men vs. women?

No, it’s also about power. Sexual harassment happens when power hierarchies in the workplace mix with the power imbalance between men men and women in society.

Men often have power over women at work. MPs and celebrities have recently been exposed for using their power and influence to act inappropriately to subordinates.

In our industry, managers and supervisors are often male. We also work in a male-dominated environment, which gives men a kind of “strength in numbers” and a power to use sexual harassment to make women feel very unwelcome in our workplaces.

If no-one’s talking about it, then we’ve not got a problem in our workplace, right?

Wrong! Sexual harassment is widespread but rarely reported and talked about.

According to the 2016 TUC report, 4 out of 5 women polled did not report sexual harassment to their employer and only 1% reported it to their union rep.

As you see from the picture, there are so many reasons not to talk about it. Sexual harassment is confusing, intimidating, isolating.

You feel you’re making a big deal out of nothing. If we look at where we work, how many of us can honestly say that they’ve never been witness to sexual banter?

Just because no one objected publicly doesn’t mean it was OK.

What do we do about it?

DON’T DO IT! You might think you know someone really well and that you have a relationship where “banter” is acceptable. But how can you know what that person is really feeling? If the person on the receiving end doesn’t object, they might be unwilling to be confrontational while feeling very uncomfortable at the same time.

Even if the individual you’re talking to feels OK, what kind of message does it send to other women who work with you if these kinds of comments are commonplace?

CAMPAIGN! Our unions need to campaign. Every workplace needs a poster with a clear message: sexual harassment is not welcome here! Serious campaigns from our unions could encourage us to challenge our ideas and shift workplace cultures in which sexual banter is seen as acceptable.

BELIEVE WOMEN! There is a stereotype of women making false allegations of sexual harassment to ruin men's reputations. This stereotype clouds judgement.

For every false allegation there are countless women suffering in silence for fear of not being believed. When an allegation is made, management and unions should proceed on the basis that the allegation is genuine.

Sexual harassment often occurs in a one-on-one setting, so it’s often “his word against hers”. A woman may not have witnesses or hard evidence but that doesn’t mean that she is lying!

SUPPORT WOMEN! Our unions need to support women who want to make complaints of sexual harassment.
This includes: providing a trained, impartial person to talk to in confidence; listening to the outcome that the complainant wants; arranging legal support. Tubeworker supporters are working on getting RMT to draw up best practice guidelines for supporting sexual harassment cases.

Sexual harassment is intimidating and isolating: unions need to be clear that you do not have to suffer it on your own.

Cleaning workers

Sexual harassment is rife amongst the cleaning grade.

The TUC survey found that women without permanent contracts were more likely to experience sexual harassment and that there was a correlation between harassment and casualisation with women on irregular or precarious contracts more susceptible.

Contracted-out, often agency cleaners are very vulnerable to sexual harassment from supervisors and managers who are often men. With insecure employment, women fear speaking up in case they lose their jobs.