Dear Colleagues,

EVERY JOB MATTERS - DEFENDING JOBS ON LONDON UNDERGROUND

STRIKE ACTION ON

As you will be aware, talks reconvened at ACAS today with London Underground, to try and resolve this dispute. Your negotiators believed that some progress had been made, but the company at the last minute decided to announce further stipulations, including RMT calling off strike action and totally withdrawing from the current dispute, which would have meant a new ballot being required for any further industrial action. This is totally unacceptable and the company has no right to challenge our ballot mandate or interfere with our internal democracy and union structure.

You will recall that we agreed to suspend our previous industrial action after reaching an agreement at ACAS, to enter into meaningful discussions and a review of Ticket Office Closures. This agreement was breached by London Underground. Despite the spin from the company nothing they are proposing is about 'modernisation. These current plans, closing every ticket office and axing nearly a thousand safety-critical jobs, is solely about massive austerity cuts driven centrally by this Government and implemented by Mayor Boris Johnson.

Despite your negotiators best efforts in which we set out a whole series of grounds which would have allowed progress to be made it, it now appears that London Underground management are hell-bent on confrontation.

Therefore our strike action remains on and for ease of reference is as follows:-

The General Grades Committee instruct all our members, EXCLUDING FLEET STAFF, not to book on for any shifts that commence between:-

21:00 hours on Monday 5th of May 2014 until 20:59 hours on Thursday 8th of May 2014.

All members employed in the FLEET GRADES will be instructed not to book on for any shifts that commence between:-

18.30 hours on Monday 5th of May 2014 until 18.29 hours on Thursday 8th of May 2014.

Furthermore all members in the station grades are instructed not to work any rest days or overtime from 00.01 hours on Tuesday 29th of April 2014 until further notice.

I therefore urge you and your colleagues to continue to stand firm and support this strike action as together we can halt LU's plans to slash jobs and close ticket offices. Be under no allusion that this dispute only affects station and ticket office staff. LUL plan to replace skilled workers with unreliable automation in all areas of its work, including train maintenance, engineering, service control and train operation.

We will again continue to seek meaningful discussions with the company to try to resolve this matter. I will of course keep you fully informed of any developments.

STAND FIRM
SUPPORT THE STRIKE ACTION,

Yours sincerely,

Mick Cash
Acting General Secretary