'Up to 1,400 jobs' to go at TfL

I suspect TfL will start to use contractors as much as possible and therefore lose some in-house experience. 

Seems to be remarkably similar to Company Plan back in 1992 and that didn’t work out well for everyone

The letter on Tom Edwards twitter




"The business area affected by the proposed changes is the TfL Engineering Directorate"

"The number of actual dismissals is likely to be lower than the number of possible dismissals because it is anticipated that employees will obtain new roles via the selection and assessment process"

"The overall reduction in headcount is dependent on a number of factors to be discussed during consultation but is anticipated to be between 68 and 276".

"The establishments affected by the possible redundancies are:
Palestra House, 197 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8NJ
Albany House, Petty France, SW1H 9EA
Broadway Complex, 55 Broadway SW1H 0BD
Templar House, 81-87 High Holborn WC1v 6NU"

Sounds to me like they're getting rid of a load of suits

Also from the letter on Tom Edward's twitter

Number of employees in scope/possible dismissals

Pay Band 1 - 24
Pay Band 2 - 368
Pay Band 3 - 924
Pay Band 4 - 118
Total -------- 1434

I know I got them the wrong way round first time

Lowest

under the normal banding 5 is the highest which is director level

Ah I get it now. At first I thought pay band 1 was the highest. Don't know why! Do these pay bands apply to all LU staff or just the management side of it?

They certainly applied to me when I was a senior manager at LU. We were later TUPE-d into TfL where we had no choice but to move or else we dismissed ourselves. Don't you just love reorganisations?

Clearly they are going for management levels to try to strip out higher salary and pension costs. Last year's Annual Report and Accounts was like reading a "Director's Death List" - so many of them have been booted out, no doubt with reasonably handsome payoffs. So glad I walked in 2012 and have avoided however many rounds of job re-application and assessment that have been foisted on people. I suspect HR is the only department that is being run off their feet at the moment.

Let's just hope that they have managed to get some sort of decent succession planning in place in Engineering. If a lot of the old LU Chief Engineers and / or their deputies go then LU could be in a right old mess when it comes to managing asset and project assurance and ensuring safety related signs off are in place (as required by external regulators and the Safety Certificate). [I'm assuming here that there hasn't been substantive change to assurance and sign off requirements over the last 5 years]

I bet the HR people just lurved you!!

Did you make sure you stood away from the platform edge when commuting and avoided people with long brolleys? "Hello is that MI5?, Kill him, just get rid of him, I don't care how you do it" (allegedly) said the Head of HR.

In some commercial organisations, some people are paid ABOVE the pay bands. It's so that the monkeys never easily find out how much the organ grinders are getting. The expression "off the scale" applies to those at the very top, where, sometimes, monthly cheques are obscene. All done "by negotiation" via head hunting recruitment organisations, sometimes via offshore companies as in the news very recently

Most of the Discipline and Senior Discipline Engineers are in Band 3 and I wouldn't describe that as 'middle management'.

Regards,

Dan

Pay is a right mess in many management roles within LU. There can be vast differences between people doing the exact same job role, all to do with past history than current performance / ability / competence.

DTSM was an example in point. At the same depot you could have some on c.£55k, whilst there could be someone red-circled on c.£70+k. Not value for money for the farepayer/taxpayer, and not good for staff morale either.