Cleaners

ABM claims that its latest job-cutting scheme is actually just flexibility in allocating resources. This has seen even some large and busy stations left with just one cleaner on duty. The company says that station staff can ask for more cleaners on your station, but we are not sure that this is sufficiently widely known.

So, if you need an extra cleaner on your station, ask for one (or more!). If there is an event coming up, or the weather forecast is worrying you, or the place could really do with a tidy-up, ask.

If you don’t ask you won’t get, and your sole cleaner will be left with the demands of your whole station on their shoulders. Standards will slip, safety problems could arise, and when there is an incident, guess what? Management will be asking the CSM and CSS why they didn’t ask for another cleaner!

If we all ask for extra cleaners, perhaps both LUL and ABM will realise that the current numbers of cleaners are far too low, no matter how ‘flexibly’ they are spread around.

Cleaning agency APG no longer exists. APG's agency cleaners have been transferred to the main contractor, ABM.

That sounds good until you hear that APG neglected to pay its workers outstanding holiday pay before it disbanded. Cleaners are owed hundreds of pounds. ABM says, 'It's nothing to do with us. Cleaners need to speak to APG'. But APG has gone!

So where is a cleaner to turn? To the RMT of course! Sub-contracted companies and agencies dodge paying cleaners' wages too easily. Cleaners need to be directly employed by LU.

What an absolutely phenomenal piece of spin on the LU intranet, as the company scrambles to defend its collusion in cleaner job cuts.

A bulletin claims LU has “worked with ABM to review the way we deploy cleaners”, and “decided to switch the focus from the number of cleaners that are allocated to each location to the overall quality of the work they’re doing”. As a consequence, “you [i.e., the LU staff reading the bulletin] may have noticed different numbers of cleaners at different times of the day”. In other words: jobs have been cut.

This is misrepresentation bordering on lies. The “switch” from an “input” model for the LU cleaning contract, where the contract specifies how many cleaners will be provided, to an “output” model, where the contract simply specifies the work to be done and leaves the decision about staffing levels to the contractor happened years ago - before ABM even took over the contract. There is no recent contractual or operational reason for ABM to make job cuts, they’re simply trying to save money.

LU has form when it comes to this sort of propaganda and spin about cleaners. When ABM took over the consolidated cleaning contract, an article in LU’s staff magazine On The Move announced that cleaners “will now be paid the London Living Wage”, as if this was a new innovation LU was making out of the goodness of its heart. In fact, Tube cleaners have been paid the London Living Wage since 2008/9, after a campaign of strikes from RMT secured this concession.

LU and ABM are colluding to exploit cleaners, cut jobs, and then distort the reality of this exploitation and cuts in what they communicate to directly-employed staff.

Don’t fall for it. The reason there are fewer cleaners at your station or depot is because ABM, with LU’s approval, have slashed jobs.

We all need to stand together to demand that jobs are reinstated, and that LU properly fulfils its responsibilities to the workers who clean its stations, depots, trains, and facilities by employing them directly.

RMT has called a demo outside City Hall on Thursday 20 June. It demands “no Tory cuts under a Labour mayor”, pressing Sadiq Khan not to pass on Tory austerity to transport workers and users in London.

The two specific focuses are the “Transformation” scheme, which threatens thousands of jobs in engineering and admin roles, and the struggles of outsourced workers.

The demo assembles from 10:00. Tubeworker will be there, and we hope you will be too.

Tube cleaners in the RMT are preparing to ballot for strikes. Here, a cleaner tells Tubeworker why.

“Tube cleaners have been campaigning for many years against injustice. We're fighting for dignity, and equal conditions in our workplaces. Currently we have no company sick pay, which means cleaners who get sick are forced to come to work or face financial hardship. And we also have no free travel passes, unlike directly-employed staff working on the railway.

“The biggest demand we are fighting for is direct employment, for cleaning to be brought in house. I don't consider myself an ABM cleaner. I am a TfL cleaner, I am a London Underground cleaner. ABM will probably go in a few years, some other contractor will come along. But we are doing the same work, cleaning London Underground. We should be employed directly.

“There's hasn't been industrial action for several years; union members amongst cleaners have been waiting for this dispute for a long time. People were asking, “when are we going to have a real fight?” Non-members have also been enthused by the announcement that we're planning to ballot. Since the decision was announced, I've personally recruited six people. Cleaners want to join because they see us preparing for a strike.

“We're not planning to strike simply because we're pissed off. Action is an essential organising tool. A union is only as strong as its membership. By taking action, we build the union. We need support and guidance from the rest of RMT. Many cleaners have English as a second language and many not know their legal rights. Some feel scared and isolated. The wider union can provide us with direction and information to help us build the dispute, and support us when we take action. We need to be honest with members about what it will take to win.

“We have been making good links with other unions organising cleaners, such as the IWGB. We have attend picket lines and demonstrations with them, and we've been sharing ideas and tactics at events coordinated by the New Economics Foundation. It's good to meet cleaners from universities and hospitals and discuss what we have in common. We're part of the union movement so should support each other. If they strike, they know RMT members will have their back, and vice versa. Our voice is bigger if we combine, so unions organising outsourced workers to demand direct employment should join together in common campaigns.”

Some ABM cleaners on the former JNP contract had their pictures taken, apparently in order to be issued with travel passes that would allow them to open gates while at work.

Some time has now passed, and there’s no sign of the passes.

The way to resolve the situation is simple: LU needs to issue all cleaners with the same travel passes directly-employed staff receive.

It appears that ABM is mounting a serious assault on jobs, with reports flooding in from across LU of positions being slashed.

Numerous stations with three or more cleaners on a shift are losing at least one position, with any agency cleaners first in the firing line. Many are being told they have to accept redeployment to a new station, often nowhere near their current one.

Some cleaners are being told by ABM supervisors and bosses that the pressure to make cuts is coming directly from TfL/LUL. We shouldn’t allow ABM bosses to use that fact, if indeed it’s true, to get themselves off the hook for making these cuts. But, if true, it does mean that we need to up the intensity of our fight against outsourcing. Instead of telling a contractor to cut jobs, TfL/LUL should be employing cleaners directly.

One pretext for the cuts, as we’ve previously reported, is that ABM committed to reduce the amount of agency labour on the job when it took over the consolidated contract. It has taken many agency staff from agencies like AGS on a permanent basis, but now appears to be trying to further reduce the amount of agency labour by... cutting jobs! We say: sack the agencies, not the workers!

These cuts make RMT’s recently ratified policy to move towards an industrial dispute and strike ballot of all Tube cleaners even more urgent.

Station staff in sefveral locations have been shocked to find out that the number of night cleaners on their station has been cut, without any notice or discussion.

And the cleaners involved have been told - often verbally, at just one day's notice - that there is no more work for them.

Under instruction from the Mayor and TfL, cleaning contractor ABM is reducing its use of agencies. But the point, surely, is to replace reliance on agencies with directly employing cleaners. Instead, seeing the opportunity to cut costs and boost profits, ABM is reducing reliance on agencies by ... sacking the agency cleaners.

This leaves cleaners suddenly out of work, and stations desperately under-staffed, including, for example, Brixton and Highbury and Islington stations reduced to just one cleaner on nights.

We can stop this appalling attack if we challenge it on three fronts - cleaners fighting the job cuts, station staff fighting the loss of cleaners, and all of us raising it as a political issue, demanding that our Labour Mayor intervene to stop this.

RMT activists are already going into action; the more of us join this campaigning, the better our chances of success.

Security guards and reception workers at LUL and TfL buildings are getting organised. Interserve, the outsourced contractor which employs them, is in financial chaos, and was recently bought out of administration by its own lenders.

This means these workers, who already face a raft of workplace issues, now face a deeply uncertain future.

RMT's Piccadilly and District West branch has been taking a particular lead in helping the workers organise. As well as fighting for better pay and improved working conditions for Interserve workers, RMT will also be fighting for the contract to be taken in-house and for the workers to be employed directly by LUL/TfL.

Many grades in many locations are suffering under the destaffing over recent years, or are facing imminent cuts to jobs.

The unions - primarily RMT - are fighting back on several fronts. RMT has scored some successes, including on Bakerloo South stations groups and the cleaning contractor, ABM.

Now, more stations groups are going into action, and the union is gearing up for battles against a 2009 agreement on trains that restricts depot staffing levels, and threatened cuts to train prep.

Moreover, other issues under dispute - for example, the ludicrous red tabards, or unacceptable rosters or ticketing problems - are rooted in staff shortages.

Our fightback will be stronger if we fight the roots cause rather than just the symptoms. The more we can bring these disparate disputes together, the better.

This might be easier said than done, particularly since the imposition of difficult-to-reach ballot thresholds by the 2016 Trade Union Act, but with the will and the effort, it can be done. And even if we don't feel ready to call everyone out on strike yet, we can synchronise ballots and actions in different areas.

Moreover, the root cause has a root cause too, as under-staffing is the result of under-funding. Tubeworker would like to see our unions campaign more stridently against the government's cut to TfL's funding and TfL's failure to fight that cut.