RMT London Calling

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics (attached) prove once again that LUL/TfL's pay offers lag well behind rising prices - in other words will cut your pay in real terms.

In the year to May, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 2.2%. The Retail Price index - acknowledged as seriously underestimating real inflation - stood at -1.1%. RPIX (RPI, excluding mortgage interest payments) was +1.6%.

Here are some price rises for particular areas of your spending:

Sunday, June 28 – Wednesday, July 1

Next week’s RMT AGM will be broadcast live on the Internet from Sunday afternoon (approximately 5pm – 7pm) and then daily (approximately 9am – 6pm, concluding Wednesday evening). Proceedings will also be archived for six months and will be available online within a day or two of the conference.

If you have previously set yourself a password at the members area of the RMT website you may go direct to www.rmt.org.uk/webcast and use your user name (RMT membership number) and password to log on to the webcast.

RMT's organising team explain the hows and whys of recruiting and retaining members, and keeping your membership information up-to-date. This workshop is a must for all RMT reps. Activists and members are welcome too.

Venue: Exmouth Arms, Starcross Street, near Euston

This workshop is also running the following day in east London. Details here.

RMT representatives again attended talks aimed at resolving our 'jobs, pay and justice' dispute at ACAS on Wednesday 24 June.

Most of the day's discussion centred around management's difficulty with accepting that the settlement of the 2001 dispute (the so-called 'Jobs for Life' deal) means what it actually says! The agreement clearly states that:

• "no compulsory redundancies will take place"; and that
• "This agreement applies to all staff employed by LUL, the Infracos and their subsidiaries. "

On Wednesday 17 June, RMT protested outside Mayor's Question Time against Tube cleaners' poverty pay. Protesters demanded that Mayor Boris Johnson keep his promise that everyone working for the GLA or in its areas of responsibility would receive the London Living Wage, recently uprated to £7.60 an hour.

We have learnt that TfL’s annual report, due to be published next week, will confirm that the number of senior managers earning over £100,000 a year has gone up from 123 to 163 in the past year, an increase of nearly one third. If you include Metronet and Crossrail, which is now part of TfL, the number of managers earning six figures plus goes up to 231. These figures don’t even include the huge sums that are being paid out to management consultants.

We have been negotiating with LUL on the new New Ticket Office Procedures Handbooks for over a year now and they have been introduced without due consideration to our comments and concerns. We have real fears that the original TOPH is being watered down to make it easier to reduce ticket office hours, close ticket offices and get rid of SAMF and SS jobs.

The latest membership figures for RMT in the London Transport region show that workers are joining the union at the rate of over 60 per week.

The shocking figures below show Transport for London (TfL) and London Underground Ltd (LUL)'s total spend fighting employee Employment Tribunal claims from August 2004 to the end of 2008 (not including cost of staff and management time and TfL/LUL operational resources).

These illustrate two things:

• Firstly, the extent of employee grievances against their employers, vindicating RMT's allegations of systematic mistreatment of staff, on of the three issues in our current dispute with LUL.

SOLIDARITY!
RMT, ASLEF, TSSA members defy the bosses

Last Wednesday and Thursday RMT members caused two days of hell in London. The BBC and the newspapers described the two days of strike action as “chaos”. Only London Underground and Boris Johnson tried to claim this was “service as usual”. But they are liars.

Click on the attachment to download the full Bakerloo Newsletter

Click '1 attachment' / file name to download. Read the text below.

There has been a tidal wave of media coverage of the 48 hour strike on TfL and LUL. Although that coverage is a reflection of just how successful the RMT action has been, it has also led to some incredible exaggeration, blatant political interference and in some cases sheer, barefaced lies.

The “Big Lie”

Click '1 attachment' / file name to download the new issue of our newsletter.