“London Underground’s pay offer is crap”

Pay report from Steve Hedley, RMT Regional Organiser

I attended the LUL company council meeting on the 08/9/09 and discussed the pay offer. There was no improvement whatsoever on the last offer. It remains 1.5% this year and RPI plus 0.5% next year. As discussed with Pat Sikorski earlier LUL are prepared to release our reps for a meeting and I am requesting the Tuesday 6th October 2009 (one day after the ASLEF reps are released) to take a sounding on where we go.
I personally feel that the deal is very poor and therefore unacceptable however to get a better deal our pay fight needs to be built up again. I certainly think that to accept such a poor deal would let ASLEF off the hook as they can then blame us for not rejecting the deal. The pay will not be processed until next year anyway as the cut off date to have it paid this year according to Howard Collins is the 16th September 2009.[this has now been extended to the 25th of September]
One possibility is non acceptance and then put a pay claim in as normal for 2010 this would effectively let them impose a 1.5 percent pay deal this year and then we could still negotiate for 2010 where the prospect of a half percent pay rise might spark our members into action.
To sum up the pay offer is still crap but we should not rush in let’s see what the TSSA and ASLEF do. We as a union will then be in possession of all the facts to make an informed decision. We cannot be forced into a rushed poorly considered deal by management and as ASLEF have already agreed their meeting for October 5th there is absolutely no point in us being pushed into a rash decision because even if we did accept the dealthe deadline of the 25th will be exceeded before ASLEF make any decision.