Reports and updates from Regional organiser John Leach
1 TUBE UNION RMT today demanded that London Mayor Boris Johnson take “urgent and decisive” action to terminate the Tube Lines contract on London Underground as it emerged that LU are calling in forensic accountants to “examine massive and secretive payments to Tube Lines’ shareholders” and after the company were branded as “ailing and failing” by TFL.
Regional Organiser Steve Hedley writes ...
After a mammoth ten hour session at ACAS on Tuesday night, management left the building without as much as putting an offer on the table concerning pay or even medical redeployment. So non train drivers are to be discriminated against if LUL get their way; even Aslef members who are not drivers will suffer.
Of course we want everyone including drivers to have better medical redeployment, but LUL walked away promising only to hold a further meeting next Tuesday.
Dear colleagues,
LUL - TfL - Alstom - Cubic - bus workers
LUL Pay
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 percent this year and RPI plus 0.5 percent next year. LUL are prepared to release our reps for a meeting and I am requesting Tuesday 6th October 2009 (one day after the ASLEF reps are released) to take a sounding on where we go.
I met with I.S.S. management on Thursday 13th August to discuss the £550,000 savings that Metronet wish them to make.
1. I.S.S. guaranteed that no I.S.S employees would be made redundant. All redundancies would come from agency staff.
2. Where possible existing I.S.S. staff would be used to cover all the needed positions in workplaces.
I am pleased to announce that all RMT members facing compulsory redundancy have now been given or will be offered jobs. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone of you who showed steadfast support for your colleagues who were at risk of being made unemployed. In particular I would like to thank all reps activists and those who manned the picket lines that made our forty eight hour dispute a huge success.
I am writing regarding the latest position in negotiations with LUL and TfL over pay, the 'jobs for life' deal and bullying of our members.
Talks at ACAS have broken down because management have refused to discuss pay and bullying. The 'jobs for life' deal has been discussed but despite this deal being signed off by Gordon Brown and guaranteed by John Prescott management are refusing point blank to abide by it.
We have had another Goebbels-like piece of propaganda in senior management's 'Heads Up' communiqué stating that there are now only 70 jobs at risk and there were over 250 vacancies. If this were true then management could easily guarantee everyone at least one alternative job: why then are they not prepared to do this?
[1] The RMT held a protest today outside London Underground head offices to protest at the first wave of job cuts which comprises of 1000 jobs. Around thirty RMT activists turned out to demand that those responsible for running up the massive TfL/LU defecit of over £2.5 billion be sacked and not the workers who are being sacked because of senior management incompetence.
1. Thousands of job losses are being proposed by LUL/TfL. We are attending another meeting tomorrow to get more details. The RMT HAS A VERY CLEAR POSITION WE WILL CAMPAIGN AGAINST ALL JOB CUTS AND BALLOT OUR MEMBERS IF COMPULSORY REDUNDANCY IS FORCED ON PEOPLE.
In the meantime we are calling on you all to support a protest outside LUL HQ, 55 Broadway (ST James Park station) on Wednesday 11th February at 7.30am to demand that no jobs are cut.
2. We are meeting with Gerry Duffy to discuss levels of representation for drivers, SRT, service control, King's Cross station.