Strike 5th & 6th August

From the Londoners I've spoken to most have some sympathy with the strikes (although naturally annoyed their day gets disrupted), but I can't help but feel this sympathy will quickly diminish if these strikes/threatened strikes continue.

RMT have now joined this strike.
www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-confirms-tube-strike-dates/

Wednesday 5 August 18.30 to Thursday 6 August 18.29

TSSA join strike:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-33533966

It looks like things are getting worse according to the BBC and the strike is still on. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-33691379

LBC reporting that Unite have rejected the offer but the other three unions still to decide. Out of interest, what departments have staff who are members of Unite? Presumably it's cleaners, but who else?

I heard today it was all four unions who rejected the offer.

Worse case the company could impose rosters but to be honest that will be the last thing they would do due to the impact from the unions. Drivers are not on set times in there contract just they must average 35 hours throughout the year. Our contracts state days and nights as required don't know if the operating side are like this especially the drivers.

What exactly are the unions after? A press release I saw claimed TfL are prepared to offer an extra £200 PER SHIFT for drivers if they have to potter around at night, a four day week where drivers won't have to work more than 32 hours, and once everything's in place for the night tube drivers won't even have to do nights if they don't want to.  

@ forumusernametaken

The unions have clearly and regularly stated that this is not about money. On that basis, with that knowledge, you state that "£200 per shift is now being offered"

So what? If it truly is not about money, then are the employers trying to fly a big enough kite with a £ sign on it so they can later turn round and say "Look, it WAS about money after all"? I think it is about PRINCIPLE and NOT money.

This is dangerous stuff, and I really don't think it right to discuss it further here.

Doubtless somebody else will offer a more full response if they can bring themselves to type it all out - but I think it's worth mentioning that this isn't just a drivers' strike.

Indeed. This dispute affects ALL grades. Of course the mainstream media are focusing on it as a pay issue, especially when drivers are on 50k a year. That makes for a much more headline grabbing story. Many of us on the tube earn far less than that.

Depending what union you are in, and to an extent your own point of view, this dispute is about far more than what's being reported. As someone who works on the station side, and is in the RMT, let me explain why I and most of my station colleagues are striking.

1 A net loss of 838 jobs on the station side alone.

This is being achieved by people taking voluntary severance, as well as vacancies not being filled. Stations at the minute are being run on a skeleton staff, its not just standing round on gatelines, its security checks, equipnent checks, safety critical responsibilties like despatching trains when things go wrong, going onto the track, assisting disabled customers to travel, updating customers and staff of any issues filling out paperwork, training colleagues, I could go on. So a loss of 838 people will have a huge impact on the service we provide to the public, as well as contractors. Naturally, we are totally against any cuts in staff numbers, especially when the system is at its busiest in its history, and is forecast to grow.

2 Work/life balance of the new rosters.

Under the fit for future plans, station staff will be taken out 'from behind glass' into the ticket hall environment, so ticket office staff, control room staff and station supervisors will be visible and available a lot more. OK fine, I can accept that. I'll miss being in my control room, but change is inevitable. However at the moment, being a rostered member of staff, which is someone who works at one station permanently, I know my roster, I know my rest days. I currently have one clear weekend, ie both saturday and sunday off every 4 weeks. Under the new proposals, I would have a clear weekend every 15 weeks. What kind of life would that be? Most of the time I would be working shifts with a single rest day in between shifts. If I was doing 9-5, fine. But if for example, as indicated on these new rosters, I would be finishing a night shift on say monday morning, monday would then be my rest day, and I'd be required to start an early shift at 0600 the following morning. Where's the time to relax? Where's the time to spend with my family? Where's the quality of life?

3 Pay

The pay dispute is important. with housing and energy costs skyrocketing, as well as food, the proposed pay of 1% is unfair. It's us on the frontline that make the tube what it is. The £500 bonus does not recompense me for all the extra anti social hours I will be required to do. Moving records numbers , reducing delays, hitting customer service satisfaction targets regularly. Why shouldn't we be recompensed for that success?.

4 Ticket office closures

Personally I think the ticket office closures are a losing battle, but I'll still fight to save them. They might "only serve 3% of all transactions" but thats still 100k people a day.


5 Casualisation of staff.

Previous agreements of agreed workng are being watered down. Management are intent on changing the framework agreement. This very important document sets out our hours of work, location, overtime payments, holidays etc. One example where it is being watered down is that the company wants staff to cover areas either side of the cover area that we are being sent to early next year. This is a complete change from the original proposal where staff would work on the one area of stations only. This in practice could result in someone normally working on the Harow-On-The Hill area being at Chesham one day, then Finchley Road the next, again, being on unsocial shifts will have no bearing, you will go when and where the company say so. Its basically a line based cover system, which is something the unions got rid of many years ago, only to have it re-imposed.


So there you have it folks. An insiders view of the current dispute. Regardless of whether you are in favour or against the strikes, the company and the Mayor have handled it badly. The night tube plans were announced in November 2013, no prior consulation with the unions or the workforce, it was to be imposed if needed. Night tube is due to start September 2015. So why with almost two years notice, the company has only been talking to the unions re night tube for the last 4 months??? There's a lot of politics at play here, the new boss of the tube is an infamous union buster, the negotiating team on the LU side are new, and have no experience with the rail unions, and they have been given very little wriggle room to make a deal. The company have given the workforce the impression, that if the deal is not forthcoming, the rosters and night tube will be imposed. Boris Johnson refuses to talk to the unions, but he is pulling the strings behind the scenes.

As to the 32 hour four day week, thats been a long term aim of the union, along with free travel on the mainline TOCs. Its there every year in the union's pay proposals. Its a bartering position, you ask, you dont get, some things we get, some we dont, thats negotiating. It saddens me to see this dispute constantly reported as a pay dispute by greedy staff. Sadly, the company does everything it can to perpetuate this myth.

"Sadly, the company does everything it can to perpetuate this myth."

Well, I know which staff I regard as being greedy, and it isn't the people who you see on the stations and in the fronts of trains, or the people you don't see who are in the depots and wielding spanners and generating power and routing trains etc. It's the top brass at 55 who might possibly deserve to get paid their eye-watering salaries IF they'd managed to achieve their business objective without disenfranchising the workforce. The fact that they have had two years to sort this, the fact that they could easily have trained a whole night-shift team in plenty of time, the fact that they could have done so very much more to bring in this new working pattern without disrupting the bread and butter peak time/daytime service and the fact that they will still happily pocket their pay and no doubt claim a bonus as well tells me where the lazy, work-shy, greedy so and sos are.

I'm going to be controversial and disagree somewhat. Many senior managers and directors work ridiculously long hours and are effectively "on call" all the time. They are pressured from all sides and often have little time to escape from those pressures. Some of the issues they have to deal with have no easy answers when you consider all the relevant facts and whatever they decide to do they're going to be criticised by someone.

LU has been an industrial relations battleground from decades. I've never known a time when things were running smoothly because there is not actually an acceptance by some Trade Unionists that the managers are there to manage. It's a battle for control and for many years LU often backed off which just reinforced the unions' perception that they had an upper hand. Now some of the issues I am sure were rather pointless and in some instances borderline spiteful in terms of tackling individual members of staff. However you can't simply leave things to rot because if someone is taking the "p" then the rest of the workforce gets hacked off with inconsistent, lax treatment because they don't like people "bucking the system".

Now I've never had to manage operational teams on the "front line" and I think it takes a particular skill set to do it well in a fair, balanced but sufficiently robust way. LU promoted people to management roles without adequate management training and it took them far far too long to recognise that failing and to try to do something about it. To that extent LU has reaped the rewards from its own poor decision making and inattention. I also think the fact that there are a number of new managers in senior positions in LU is possibly not helping matters as the old long standing relationships with key TU people have gone and new ones haven't been established (that's the sense I get when I see the various people on the telly).

I am not au fait with all the detail about the night tube dispute and I can understand why there has been a strong vote for strike and "short of a strike" action. However I equally understand that LU has quite ridiculous financial pressures on it and why it is trying to take out cost from the operation. If it doesn't do so then we are in to an era of investment cuts and later on, service cuts. The thing to watch is whatever emerges in terms of "revenue grant" for TfL from the current Spending Review. Osborne has already hacked £250m off TfL grant and I expect more to come off. Whoever is the next Mayor has some invidious choices to make about how the tube runs regardless of the Night Tube issue. If London votes for a Tory Mayor then expect massive cuts to the workforce across TfL as even more efficiency savings are demanded and current major projects complete with nothing to replace them. If you think it's bad now then give it 18 months! It might be the case that those future pressures actually cause the trade unions and management to find "common cause" and to try to settle some long standing issues but I won't hold my breath.

Brace yourselves: the unofficial vintage bus rally is back.

Last time, the routes I recorded were 8, 15, 25, 29, 205, 257 and H91.