Service Control Dispute Offer To Be Discussed By RMT Representatives

The offer from LUL is attached below

London Underground and RMT met at the conciliation service Acas on 22 and 26 June to discuss the dispute surrounding Service Control staff covering the Piccadilly, Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines.

There will be a meeting of Service Control reps on the 27th of June 2012 to discuss the proposals below.

The talks have led to a set of proposals on which RMT will be consulting with their members. At the moment, three days of strike action are due to take place commencing this Sunday.

The proposal

Mistreatment of Service Control Staff

Subject to both RMT’s agreement and cancellation of the planned industrial action, the following offer is proposed by LUL. RMT confirmed there were 3 remaining issues from the letter of 13th June as follows:

A) Job guarantees as a result of organisational change arising from the move to Hammersmith Service Control Centre. 7 specific issues were raised.

  1. That affected staff move on equivalent path as of today without requirement for reapplying or going through complex selection. In response to questions, RMT confirmed they accepted there would need to be some criteria for resolving priority. LU agrees this approach. Affected grades will be guaranteed the opportunity to secure continuing roles in Service Control. The exact details, and any accompanying criteria, will be resolved at JWP.
  2. A lifetime protection of earnings through reintroduction of ‘displaced guards’ type grade, pending re-assimilation back into Service Control at a comparable grade and salary .LU agrees to this unless staff voluntarily apply for and secure an alternative position in the meantime.
  3. A priority return to Service Control for displaced staff. LU accepts this, which it believes is already enshrined within existing agreements.
  4. Staff held back from retirement until cabin/control centre closure to be offered suitable remuneration package to do so. As discussed LU will not delay or hold back individuals from planned retirement dates.
  5. Staff who move to another job should go into training for the alternative role, be trained and allowed to maintain competence in that role, while they see out their time in the cabin role.

    The possibility of delaying future moves has been discussed at JWP and after reflection LU has decided it does not wish to pursue this. Staff will move into training for alternative positions in the normal way, subject to the current agreement. If an individual is held back by LU, LU will retrospectively apply the pay rate for the new role from the date the individual would have qualified.

  6. Anyone displaced to be displaced to a location and grade of their choice. In response to questions, it was clarified by RMT that this issue was about the reasonableness of locations.

    LU accepts that displacements will always consider staff choice within location and grade. To facilitate this, a more formal and transparent process for overseeing transfer requests and movement decisions within service control will be developed and introduced. Terms of reference for this replacement movements committee will be drawn up for agreement and implementation at SCFC by 31 December 2012 and will honour existing Functional Council agreements on movements. Staff representation will be in line with current practice.

B) Representation and release

RMT seek reintroduction of local reps for SC manager grades and more release for functional reps who they believe are being marginalised through inadequate release to deal with local issues.
LU has already jointly agreed with RMT on the Goodman Report to review the machinery with all unions, which is scheduled to commence after Olympics and Paralympics.

LU is not aware of functional reps being refused release to support manager grade members locally at LDI/grievances and will take up this specific issue directly with relevant managers. You have agreed to provide details.

C) Hammersmith Signal Cabin Grading.
RMT seek a re-grading from SO1 to SO2 to recognise the increase in train movements, changing the cabin from a slow box to a fast box, and the impact of the introduction of S stock.

LU accepts a joint review of the complexity rating of this signal cabin using the existing agreed methodology. The starting point is to establish the difference between what has been taken into account in the current SO1 grading for that cabin, and the changes that have subsequently taken effect, and then to apply these changes to the formula used.

We agreed on Friday that this work would be undertaken jointly between Gemma Hewison, Performance Manager C&H, and Simon Feldman, RMT level 1 rep.

Any change in grade will be applied retrospectively from the date of the workload increase.