Cleaners

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cleaners have scored a big win, with contractor ABM backing down from its proposal to cut the workforce by a third.
They would probably like us to believe that they have seen the error of their ways and revisited their sums, but we prefer to think that RMT's noisy preparations for battle pushed them back.
ABM still plans to employ 150 fewer cleaners than it promised in its contract bid, and it still denies those cleaners civilised conditions and pay rates, so let's used the momentum from this victory to push for more.

Scientific reports confirming the shockingly bad quality of air on London Underground are becoming an annual tradition.

The latest report, from the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, reported last week that the air on the platforms at Hampstead was around 31 times more polluted than the average in London, taken from a roadside monitoring point.

The Mayor's much-vaunted 'fares freeze' only applies to some fares, so passengers using Travelcards have once again been hit with a new year increase (or 'change', as TfL's website euphemistically calls it) of an average 3.1%.

That's bad news for our passengers, but it is also bad news for some of our workmates. Cleaners are not only paid less than LUL staff but also do not get a staff pass. So they have started the new year with more money going out and the same amount coming in.

Despite promising cleaners warm winter fleeces, ABM has failed to deliver in many places.

This means cleaners are working in the cold without proper uniform.

LU’s own uniform delivery services is also in a rather chaotic condition, meaning directly-employed and outsourced staff may be united by cold this winter.

If the situation continues, Tubeworker feels some impromptu sit-ins in mess rooms coming on...