This image has been brought to our attention; it originates with some Aslef reps.
To clarify, Tubeworker is NOT an RMT publication. We are fiercely pro-union, but we are an independent rank-and-file bulletin, published by a socialist group, and not affiliated with any individual union on the job.
Green Park station staff have found themselves wading to work this morning after rainy weather and dodgy plumbing combined to leave the mess room and other areas flooded.
There is only one usable toilet, so staff are going in and out of hte ticket office every time they need to spend a penny.
This comes after several days of faulty plumbing causing unpleasant smells and the sink to become unusable.
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.
Following Bakerloo drivers’ overwhelming vote for industrial action to win a workable timetable, LU has committed to a “no compulsory overtime” agreement on the line, as well as agreeing to review SPADs and safety incidents that have taken place under the current, and almost universally despised, “Working Timetable 44”.
Managers are meeting with reps to discuss the implementation of a new timetable, which has been brought forward to March.
Trains reps are discussing improved Boxing Day and NYE working arrangements for drivers with LU bosses.
Tubeworker supports any group of workers negotiating towards, and taking action to win, improvements to their conditions; we also believe all workers across LU should be entitled to the same benefits. It’s not fair that drivers get improved payments for working Boxing Day or NYE, when that’s just a normal working day for station staff and many other workers (including cleaners and other outsourced workers!).
RMT is now planning a new “Justice for Station Staff” campaign, bringing together a small, focused number of key issues affecting station workers into a single fight back. These issues include ending lone working; reversing or resisting two-tier workforce models (within the CSA grade, and the new proposal to create a new grade in the revenue department); demanding parity with drivers for Boxing Day payments; and auditing staffing levels and places of safety across the job to mitigate the risk of workplace violence.
Spare a thought for staff on Great Northern - and on Tube stations such as Moorgate or Finsbury Park which interchange with it.
Great Northern is supposed to be closing mid-evening at weekends to allow for engineering works. But on a seemingly random basis, management cancel this and run the service anyway. Cue confusion and irritated passengers - and the people responsible nowhere to be seen, while we get the grief.
Sadiq Khan has started the New Year with a leaflet (pictured) asking people to re-elect him because he has kept the cost of commuting down. Fair enough, and here at Tubeworker, we would much rather see Khan reelected than the Tory candidate who plans to nick our Nominee Passes.
Robbers helped themselves to some Christmas cash in two break-ins on 25 December. At Waterloo and Seven Sisters, staff booked on for Boxing Day to find that the ticket offices were not as secure as we would like to think.
As the culprits are chased down, beware of management trying to apportion some blame to station staff for not emptying the machines on Christmas Eve. They should remember that if you want the job done properly, then you have to employ and train enough staff to do it.
It was a long time coming, so you would think that management could have made the Hammersmith Servic Control Centre a decent place to work. If so, you'd be disappointed.
First up, there is the inadequate access to the building, with no parking spaces and staff assaulted while walking to work. staff facilities are well short of what we need.
Then, once inside, the control room does not have a full-size kitchen or mess facilites, and doesn't even have enough toilets. Seating, lighting and lockers are all inadequate.
Bakerloo drivers in RMT have voted by a 95% majority for strikes, and by 98% for action short of a strike, on an 80% turnout.
They’re fighting to win a workable timetable; we reported on the issues in the dispute here.
Following this overwhelming vote for action, let’s hope the bosses see sense. But if not... see you on the picket lines!
While it's easy to feel dispirited in London at the moment, a look to France can provide us with cheer and inspiration.
Rail and Metro workers are playing a leading role in a huge wave of strikes in defence of pensions. Read more here.
It's becoming an all-too familiar pattern on trains. Managers in depots get out of control, presiding over a culture of petty and arbitrary discipline, interpreting procedures and policies punitively and acting like tinpot authoritarians. RMT drivers ballot for industrial action to stop this culture, strikes are declared, negotiations take place at Acas, trains managers promise to wind their necks in, and strikes are suspended.
A few months later... the old problems have returned and we're back to square one.
Almost exactly a year ago, station staff on the Bakerloo South group had just voted for industrial action to address issues around uncovered duties and short staffing.
Strikes were called in December and January, and later suspended after LU committed to filling all vacancies; covering all duties; and conducting a staffing review across the group to identify possible needs for additional jobs.
"Working" Timetable 44 on the Bakerloo Line is simply not working.
The timetable has led to a long list of problems, including turnaround times so tight that drivers often aren't able to take a toilet break between trips. The timetable has also led to big gaps between trains at certain times, leading to overcrowding on platforms.
The longer our unions go without launching ballots over LU pay/conditions, the more momentum we hand to the bosses.
Delaying only benefits the employer. RMT announced an aspiration to have its ballot ready by the end of November; members have a right to expect these aspirations to be followed through.
Despite voting by a 98% majority for strikes, ABM cleaners will be prevented from taking legal industrial action by the Tories’ anti-union laws. Of 620 cleaners balloted, 294 voted for strikes. But because this only amounted to 48% of the total, the result fell short of the 50% turnout threshold required by the 2016 Trade Union Act.
To keep up momentum after anti-union laws scuppered the strike ballot, RMT must call further activity in the “Justice for Tube Cleaners” campaign.
Any and all suggestions should be considered. How about demonstrations at City Hall, or key TfL/LU office buildings such as Palestra or 55 Broadway?
The underlying message of the cleaners’ campaign is that cleaners are as much part of the permanent London Underground workforce as drivers, station staff, or engineers, and as such deserve equal treatment.
RMT drivers will strike on 27 November for 24 hours from 2200. The strike day called off in the summer is back on as management have still refused to deal with the issues over pay, procedures, and treatment of staff. A future date in December will be announced if management refuse to move.
Tubeworker urges the drivers to go for this time and calls on Aslef members to respect the strike. See you on the picket lines!
Sounding a loud fanfare about how much they care about us being battered at work, LUL management are promising what looks like an increase in staffing but on closer examination amounts to undermining us.
Management say they will recruit sixty new revenue staff, but they are calling them revenue control officers, not RCIs, so we are willing a stake a week's wages on this being a cheaper version.
There will also be 150 more CPOS staff (lower-paid TfL workers), fifty more coppers, and an enlarged Workplace Violence Unit.
Unions have long been pressing LU to fill the vacancies in the revenue department, which have gone unfilled for over a decade. The point has also been made that there may be some connection between the £90 million the company says it loses in lost revenue and the fact that it has deliberately understaffed the revenue department.
Recent spikes in workplace violence have brought the issue to a head, with many workers arguing that an increase in RCI numbers would improve workplace safety.
We already know that management are using rising concerns about assaults as a pretext to undermine our jobs by bringing in staff from other areas of TfL to do station staff's work. Rather than increase station staffing, the company prefers staffing on the cheap, and is using Surface Transport staff for patrol duties.
Not only does this undermine Tube staff, it also puts the Surface Transport staff in danger - as highlighted by a recent incident at Barking.
Central line staff have been shocked to be summoned to LDIs for absences that include assaults.
The policy on this is very clear - as is the basic human morality! If you are assaulted at work and need some time off sick, then you deserve support not punishment. It is a breach of the policy to even count this as an item, let alone to call an LDI and issue a warning. It is not good enough for management to say that a warning can be overturned at appeal, as the member of staff should not have to go through this in the first place.
On 12 December, we’ll have the chance to kick the Tories out of government. Tubeworker encourages all readers to vote Labour in every constituency.
Labour is the only alternative party of government. It has its most left-wing policy platform for decades, and a left-wing membership prepared to push the leaders further to the left.
The RMT London Transport Regional Council on 31 October voted for a network-wide dispute and strike ballot on the issue of staffing on stations.
Tubeworker supports the protests in Chile which started On 4 October following President Sebastián Piñera announcing a 30p rise in transport tickets in the capital, Santiago.
Initially protests were organised by school students who started a mass fare evasion on the metro, encouraging others not to buy tickets. By 19 October the entire metro system had been closed down due to the protests, which have been heavily repressed with serious police violence.
Some comments on the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests on the Tube from us.
We support direct action against climate change. We’ve highlighted this many times and have drawn attention to the central role that workers’ action has to play in fighting for a transition to a sustainable economy.
While we have criticisms of XR, particularly in terms of what we feel is their naive attitude to the police and state power generally, they have played an undeniably important role in raising the profile of this issue.
After months of preparation, RMT will ballot ABM cleaners for industrial action. The ballot runs from 28 October to 19 November. Tubeworker encourages all cleaners to vote yes.
LU has now issued its “full and final” offer in the ongoing pay talks. The first thing to note is that “full and final” is meaningless jargon. The offer's only final when we accept it, or we give up the fight to improve it!
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