LUL Trains

Attached are flexible working guides for London Underground trains TOMs effective 2009

We note the correspondence from London Underground. We instruct the General Secretary to forward this letter to our functional council representatives of train, depot and service control staff, asking for their comments and any additional information they may have about this issue, and to place replies in front of us.

London Transport Regional Council and branches to be advised.

Tube union RMT confirmed today that train crew members on the Victoria Line are to be balloted for strike action over a range of grievances that amount to a total breakdown in industrial relations:

• Forcing Drivers to work overtime. Drivers being made to start a duty which would result in them working beyond their finishing time.
• Failing to hold meetings requested by members such as flexible working requests, grievance hearings, and disciplinary appeal hearings.
• Trying to conduct meetings without the full level 1 rep in attendance.
  

Your RMT local and Tier 2 Reps have now met with management twice regarding the ‘Mexican stand off’ incidents at Mill Hill East. Senior signal engineers were also in attendance at this meeting.

These incidents occurred as Northern Line trains were routed in such a way that they were brought to stand, facing each other, on the same single line section of track.

A meeting took place on August 1st, between RMT Officials, RMT Central Line Representatives and senior LU management in an attempt to avert a ballot of all Central Line drivers due a breakdown in industrial relations on the line.

Relations between management and your industrial and safety representatives have worsened over the past 18 months or so until it has got to the stage where your union firmly believe that the Central Line management is out of control.

Senior Central Line managers seem to believe that LU policies and procedures, the Health and Safety at

In the latest incident, which happened at 9.50 on Monday morning (22nd July), the driver was given a target speed and proceeded to depart Finchley Central from platform.

He was already in the process of stopping as he had seen another train heading towards him from Mill Hill East as the Line Control emergency call to stop came through.

The driver was forced to carry out a wrong directional move back to Finchley Central to allow the train from Mill Hill East to continue to Finchley Central, an emergency preventative move that could only be carried out by a driver up-front in the cab.

Attached is the latest edition of RMT up front. This issue focuses on the proposed £350 Boxing Day payments and changes to TOPRA. Main stories follow:

Proposed Boxing Day bonus and changes to TOPRA
RMT demands improvements to deal

The proposed arrangements for Boxing Day payments negotiated between London Underground and ASLEF behind closed doors fall short of RMT’s aspirations. Following a meeting with all RMT drivers’ reps, the union has written to LU demanding further talks to improve the deal.

TUBE UNION RMT demanded urgent answers from London Underground chiefs today over massive breaches of safety that enabled two trains to end up narrowly avoiding a head on collision on a section of the Northern Line on Monday evening.

We welcome the report from our Regional Organiser.

We note that LUL presented its three-month review of its detrainment procedure to our Trains Safety Council representatives on Monday 1 July. The company has made no progress in achieving a technical solution to minimising overcarries, and continues to deploy station staff as part of its detrainment procedure.

It is therefore clear that the work being carried out by station staff is permanent. It is thus no longer appropriate for this to be done by the Special Requirements Team; rostored station staff posts should be restored.