Tube strike looming

Just to add a bit more for your copy!

This hasnt all just started happening this week!
All this has been going on since 2007, October in fact! LUL have known for all this time and now they start playing dumb!
There is a thread here:
districtdave.proboards39.com/index.cgi?board=Stations&action=display&thread=1191940350

Both Trade Unions asked for clarification that the use of agency staff and security guards was a temporary measure only.
LUL have refused to say it is temporary.
The unions gave a deadline.
That deadline has passed.


There was also a bit about Trade Unions not wanting jobs for non Union staff! Actually a number of the agency staff (working very long hours and with poorer conditions) have joined a union. This is about removing previous agreements and fragmentation.

COLIN, The ES were actually in support of the cause of this action. They had a pro-staff stance in their Editorial column. They said that the notice given to TfL by TSSA and RMT was far too short though, BUT AS THEY [TfL] HAVEN KNOWN SINCE LAST YEAR.........

Further fragmentation of the network by contracting out station staff will remove the "ownership" that there currently is, though it will no doubt mean more pen pushers are needed to keep tracks of all those contracts!
Do you want a situation like on NR (or indeed an airport) where at one station there are staff from 5 different companies and where they are not allowed to make a decision as it much further outside their remit.

Hopefully the ES will see that agency/security staff are not the best option as part of their Safer Stations campaign and that railway staff part of the organisation that also operates the trains is the sensible way. They hinted that the real reason for LU's motive was to save cash (in my opinion, probably to prop up the buses! and to pay back the loan from HM Treasury!). Do they have an LU staff member as a staff at the moment ;D ;D ;D

So Veronica Wadley, Evening Standard Editor please don't be fooled by the gigantic Ken.... err.... I mean TfL Spin machine.

Maybe they could follow an LU Station Supervisor round on a Saturday night a lovely east London station! ;D ;D

I don't dispute that at all - it just winds me up that when you take the whole piece of reporting in context, it has more errors than I've had hot dinners!

I still say it's the media's fault for publishing the wrong information - they have a duty to check their facts, not rely on one sole source.....................I thought they learned that lesson with the David Kelly situation (the MP who committed suicide after the media reported things without checking their sources). Still, I suppose their work ethic still centres around what makes the best story .........

I think you are somewhat late with your comment but then I think you have mentioned before that you weren't even 'in the job' when LU began to be carved up. It has been going on since the late 1980s.
Operating is really all that is left of LU and if it disappears I doubt that many people will notice as long as whoever is around is recognisable as belonging to the system i.e. some kind of uniform!
Perhaps you don't realise what has gone over the last two decades but it is a great deal. Indeed there isn't much left considering that currently LU is little more than train and station operating staff. LUs only assets are its employees of which there are a lot less than there once were, thousands having been transferred to many other companies or given severance or early retirement as more and more of the combine has been outsourced.

As a controller you would've come to the grade at a time when new controllers were already on lower pay than their predecessors had been and when the status of the job had been eroded considerably compared to how it was. The cuts in pay coincided with the opening of new control rooms like the Bakerloo where the older controllers were given some tough choices and many of them decided to take the severance pay rather than a wage cut to bring them into line with new entrants to the grade.

Operating have become the few and indeed are the last of the few as many have already gone over the years. Nobody and nothing is indispensable as we discovered on Engineering. We were not the first to be sold off to the highest bidder and we had no say in it at all. You have to remember that LU is no longer a public service but a business and that there is no such thing as job security these days.
LU took decisions years ago which have placed it where it is today mostly for political reasons and it means that there are many ways to improve profits, today's real targets despite what you may be led to believe.

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that long ago there were proposed plans to sell off stations and to outsource ticket sales to save money. Agency staff are not new by any stretch of the imagination but what is new and growing is the percentage of staff on the network who are not LU employees. Devolution was a back door to invoke 'Action Stations' which the unions had managed to resist in the late 1980s and a great deal changed then though many seemed unwilling or unable to forsee what was coming.

There is today no task on LU that cannot be carried out by non-LU labour, it is simply a question of training. As long as TfL is in control the remnants of the combine can be further dissolved and no-one will notice or mourn it any more than they did the division of LT, the creation of LRT and subdivision into LUL and LBL and the subsequent and ongoing sell offs.

Of course you are quite correct that you are entitled to hold your opinion and I take no issue with it at all. My point was simply that your opinion is probably based upon your service with LU and you would therefore be unaware of the many changes that occurred prior to your service.

When I started my career with LTE, as it was then, the Line Controller was God, it was his railway but it is not quite the same these days nor has it been for many years. The job has been devalued to some extent by the pooling and muddling of the roles of signal operator, service controller, information assistant and engineering works controller as was instigated when the new Bakerloo control room opened in the late 1980s. In those days I was a regular worker in the Central/Bakerloo/Met/Jubilee control rooms complex and I did much of the comms installation and commissioning work for the Bakerloo control room. I recall what the 'old hand' experienced controllers thought of the new broom invoked under 'Command & Control'. Basically a new breed of line controllers were created on lower wages and having to wear multiple hats! It was around this time that LIAs in the Met/Jub control room were making noises about being regraded to assistant line controller although their background was generally admin rather than trains or stations.
Of course 'Action Stations' was still in the works at the time although it was opposed fiercely and 'Devolution' was already being planned which changed completely the entire management and hierarchical structure of each line. The introduction of the DSM grade flooded the job with managers who mostly were from outside and with no railway experience or knowledge at all in keeping with the new idea that a manager can manage anything without being required to know in detail what those he manages actually do. This was a seed change in the entire organisation, this is when it became possible to replace time served LUL staff with anyone at all!
The current line controller grade, service controller 2, is in real terms at least two grades lower in terms of responsibility and remumeration than it was 25 years ago. The person who would once have sat at the line controller's desk is now sitting in an office as a manager carrying some of the responsibilities of the old controller grade, one of a team of managers in overall charge of the control room, in the old days those management posts were covered by divisional management which was a present but rarer breed.
Devolution has allowed each line or pair of lines to 'do it's own thing' such that things may be similarly handled but not always in exactly the same way, thus there is fragmentation and this will enable further devolution at some future time possibly into separate operating companies as all the groundwork has been laid.
As for Cobourg St. it was one of the first control rooms that I ever worked in, in the late 1970s. In those days it was forbidden to have the lights on at night or to make noise for fear of waking up the Gods and the regulators who liked to 'put their pajamas on' and those of us sent there to push buttons and joint test the signalling were made acutely aware to be on our best behaviour. In the 1980s it was a different story when I went to Cobourg St. to change out the line controllers GRP desks over 10 or 11 weekends. I had all the lights on and I was drilling holes in the floor too. The residents weren't happy but they weren't quite the Gods that they once had been! What was very noticeable at that time both in Engineering management and in the control rooms was the softening of attitudes and the unwillingness sometimes to make a decision in case it was wrong. This then was the period of wishy-washy management while I suspect that everyone was trying to keep a clean slate as Devolution loomed on the horizon. Lots of changes followed and things didn't really settle down again until the mid to late 1990s depending upon where one was.
I spent most of my last couple of years until 2004 working often in the Picc/Dist control room, over my 28 years I dealt with controllers, signalmen, regulators etc at all the control rooms including the old HQ control and the new NCC as it was when it opened.
I think I take a balanced view of what exists today in comparison to what existed 25 years ago. There is no doubt that some things have changed for the better although my personal belief is that there is far too much politics within and without the LU organisation. This is definitely not helped in any way by the unions who despite their militant front have been weak for at least a decade and have failed to address the real issues for many years preferring instead the press attention created from sensationalising everything.

I agree with you that it is wrong to pay staff and contractors/temps/etc different rates for the same job. As for ballots RMT has always had a reputation for divisive ballots, I wish you luck at the union meeting.

Yes indeed, Tube Lines inherited hundreds literally! I was told the boss had an entire floor of staff at Canary Wharf and he didn't know what they did and why it wasn't done by employees so they were outed fairly quickly one way or another.

Agency and contract staff have always been a feature on LT/LU though in perhaps almost every department except operating and wage differentials have always existed in such situations. Certainly as both a chargehand and as a supervisor I had both agency staff and subcontractors working for me and alongside me on several jobs in the years before devolution.

I think one of Metronet's biggest problems is the amount of agency and contracted self employed staff who were paid quite a bit extra over employees for doing in real terms less hours and less work! Many of these staff were former colleagues who jumped ship to reap the rewards of privatisation and many of them doubled their salary in the process although I suspect they have not been doing quite so well for a while. At devolution some engineering staff had already been working as contract staff for more than 5 years in the days when LU had no money and we were all doing 'Free Work'.

I wonder how many remember those days, when we could get a train out every night for nothing on the promise that we'd pay later when the department had some money? At that time I was working as a minor and medium works surveyor visiting stations, depots and offices drumming up work which we did for nothing on the understanding that the departments we did such work for would pay at some future time. We suddenly discovered that we were competing against outsiders for work which they often got because of political decisions made in very high places. They were able to 'make hay while the sun shone' and divert large amounts of budgets into their coffers and the real loser was the travelling public.
There is no doubt that the whole of engineering was dismantled piece by piece from the late 1980s as a deliberate political act at a time when the directors had no bottle and the management in all departments simply towed the line. Years of experience walked out of the offices on Friday afternoons and returned to the same desks doing the same jobs on Monday morning as contractors on more money and usually with a nice severance package in the bank too!
I knew hundreds at many levels who took the severance but never left!

Actually it is staffed by more LUL staff than Wimbledon!

Heathrow T5 will have a LUL Station Supervisor who will be there when the need arises to apply LUL Operational Procedures.
They will not be responsible for the operation of the station as BAA are the landlord.
BAA Rail/HEx have sub-contracted platforms 5&6 (the LU ones) to another firm (their name is made up of four letters but cant remember what it is! Help HEx Dave) and are a very big company.

If this was the case with the new Wood Lane then I would agree with you 100%, but the T5 business is different!

Mmm......... but just how is T5 different from T123 and T4 which AFAIK are also BAA owned?

1) We won't be getting free LU travel, unfortunately...

2) ICTS, who are "business partners" of HEx, are supplying the staff for the LU side, the same they do with the Connect and general Heathrow stations management

3) If you'd of read my earlier post mitcham, you would of realised that these SOA's are trained exactly the same way (if not better ) than CSA's, and they have no training on the HEx at all

4) The reason why T5 is being run by HEx, is because the station is inside the terminal quite literally, and BAA would rather airport staff run it, instead of an outside company which in this case is LU

5) Don't forget; LU have paid nothing for the station, are going to pay nothing, but are getting revenue from ticket sales. The reason LU has a station in T5 is because it looks good for BAA and will provide a much needed transport link that costs no extra

T4 is within Terminal 4 and was often difficult to get into at night, worse still was parking the company vehicle outside the terminal while I did my maintenance. In the end I used to get dropped at T4, access the terminal and let myself into the station then walk the tunnel either to Hatton cross or to T123 doing my signal maintenance. Of course it was touch and go whether I would get to T123 and have completed all my work without holding juice sometimes, that walk is the greater portion of the 5000m+ loop being more than 3000m as I recall and no fun carrying tools, trainstop gauge, oil, cleaning materials and a bag of replacement lamps even with an assistant!

As for T123 it is true to say that the station is contained but it lies within the BAA complex having no passenger street access of its own (access via BAA lift, BAA escalator or walkway) although it does have a staff lift to the bus station and an emergency exit by the staff car park.

AFAIK BAA were adamant that they were going to run the station until it was pointed out to them that they would be unable to deal with signalling problems as they were not qualified to do so. Personally I think LUL should've let BAA have its way and at the first sign of failure simply cut out trains to T5 completely. I really can't see LUL making a great deal in revenue from T5 and serving it could well have a negative impact elsewhere on the system.

LT used to be called a cowboy outfit and I don't think LU is far off the same comment at times but the difference is that LU has very little control, Ken and his cronies make the real decisions and LU has no choice but to tow the line.

You must be joking! There used to be powered trolleys when I joined the system in the 1970s although they were outlawed before 1980. In the 1990s someone wanted to use a motorbike powered trolley but that idea was quickly squashed. Certainly during the late 1980s there was a powered trolley sat on the end of the platform at Aldwych, I have no idea how long it had been there but it was definitely out of use.

Mmmm.

BAA will pay for a private contract staff to detrain LU trains. So this is using the porter buttons to close up the train and then give the train op the right to leave. Is it just me or is that just a crazy idea

So what happens if somebody is carried over into the siding? No LU staff to assist the detrainment (bar the driver), so the driver get's the blame.

Or the BAA private security guard gives the driver the right and the train SPAD's.........

LU already employ people to do detrainments, they're called CSA's. If BAA want to build a nice shiny terminal and then collect the revenue that's fine. BUT they shouldn't be getting involved with operational procedures.

So what happens when T6 is built, BAA fund a new tube line and insist on their own drivers, signallers, station staff.......

With regards to comments made by Hex Dave.

1) How much are BAA paying to run the Picc Line from T5? Although they will collect the majority of revenue made
2) Would BAA have been granted planning permission without a tube station
3) Why are SOA's "better trained" than LU's own staff?
4) What about the rumoured cost that LU pay BAA for the use of the Heathrow Express services - rumour was that it ran into 6 figures over a year.

TBH I didn't fully realise the issue the unions had with T5 - I thought we'd have an Ealing Bdy, Wimbledon type operation. I now see the unions issues in a different light.

The last time that LUL outsourced detrainments, they were brought back in house (at Barking) as the contractors/TOC werent doing very well!

We must not casualisation infect the railway. It is bad news.

I was reading what our Tim O'Toole had written in the that awful staff magazine written by people on another London Underground and thought how out of touch is he! That speil might appeal to the new MacDonalds style workers they are trying to recruit - but not people that know what they're doing!

If I have read everything correctly (and I may not have done), the staff on the platforms will effectively be CSAs working for a different employer. As I understand it, they will receive the same training as an LU CSA in tipping out and giving the right.
If so, in the first scenario it will be exactly the same as if a passenger gets overcarried into any other siding with the blame being given to whoever would normally get the blame (I'm guessing it would be the person who tipped out the carriage they were over-carried in, whether that was the driver, a CSA or any other member of staff).
Regarding the second scenario, I would have thought that it is always the responsibility of the driver not to pass a signal at danger,* and that the "right" should not be regarded as the "right to depart" but a "right to depart when the signal permits". If a driver SPADs after being given the right, it should not matter whether this happens at T5 or any other station on the network. I am not an LU employee though, so I could be wrong on this.

*except in cases of equipment failure, or when "applying the rule" in appropriate circumstances.