Hi, I'm Les Bruty, H&S Rep At Wembley Park.
I'd like to welcome all members to your local Website pages, somewhere you can vocie your views or annouce someones birthday its your choice.
So please take time to ask your reps to upload your entries.
Transport For London's commissioner Peter Hendy was recently interviewed by Dave Hill for The Guardian.
In the interview Hendy says that TFL will be facing cuts in its budget of 21% over the next few years. Future job losses are discussed with Hendy foreseeing that "The other thing you take a hit on is the cost of running the place. We will be doing less in some areas, so we will need less people to do it"
In an interview on LBC Radio, Boris Johnson is asked "For the record, the mayor of London believes London will be adequately protected from fire by twenty-seven appliances crewed by part time staff, trained for on average two weeks." Boris didn't confirm the safety of the plans, dodging the question by answering 'The preparations were perfectly good.'
I have sent the following message of support to French rail strikers. You can read about their action here.
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I am writing on behalf of the London Transport Region of the National Union of Rail Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) here in the UK. I write to tell you of our strong support for the action you are taking in defence of pensions.
The BBC have an article on RMT General Secretary Bob Crow's comments on the new Labour leader Ed Miliband.
The article says "Mr Crow, general secretary of the RMT union, claims Mr Miliband might break his pledge to attend a rally against public spending cuts."
"Mr Crow said a Labour leader who failed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the party's core supporters would "get slaughtered at the polls".
The full article is here.
Greater London Authority member Valerie Shawcross has put forward a motion to end the job cuts at London Underground. When the meeting began only five of eleven elected Tory members were present. Three left when the motion regarding LU job cuts came to the agenda which meant there were not enough members at the meeting for it to continue.
It is reported that one Tory AM, when asked why they left the meeting, responded "because we couldn't be arsed".
The strike on Tuesday September 7 was magnificently supported by Train and Station RMT members.
The few and infrequent services that did run on the Bakerloo Line offered little by way of “a world class tube service.” The LU managers supposedly running the railway also decided to throw out tried and tested safety mechanisms put in place following the Kings Cross fire disaster.
I have written this article for my local anti-cuts campaign newsletter in Hackney ...
We may not have London Underground here in Hackney (except at our very edges!), but the loss of 800 Tube staff posts would still affect us - in a very bad way. So, many Hackney residents and workers fully support Tube unions RMT and TSSA in their campaigning and industrial action against these cuts.
Research by several organisations across London has found that LGBT people fear for their safety on public transport including the tube and that there is a higher incident of assault - both verbal and physical - on public transport than there is in other public areas.
The British Transport Police state ‘For passengers, feeling safe is as important as being safe. The visible presence of rail staff, PCSOs and police officers can reduce the fear of crime dramatically.’
With these figures showing how LGBT people feel about travel on the underground, it should be considered that many LGBT people will feel more at risk of assault on the underground as staff cuts will inevitably mean the reduction of staff visibility.
I recommend this article for some interesting insight into why industrial (ie. all-grades) trade unionism is more effective than craft (single-grade) trade unionism.
It was written by Irish Marxist James Connolly, who was a trade union organiser in the USA at the time (1910) that he wrote this article.