London Underground Ltd

This General Grades Committee notes the report from our Lead Officer and are extremely dismayed that London Underground has failed to make any significant offer at ACAS that would be acceptable to this union and our members. Not only that, but LU’s last minute conditional demand that we withdraw our dispute over this is completely inappropriate and not how this union does business. It is also a reprehensible attempt to interfere with the internal democracy of this union. As a consequence our strike action scheduled for next week remains on.

Dear Colleagues,

EVERY JOB MATTERS - DEFENDING JOBS ON LONDON UNDERGROUND

STRIKE ACTION ON

This week saw the RMT take their second 48 hour period of strike action against London underground's devastating plan to close all ticket offices and shut nearly a thousand jobs. Many tube lines were suspended by the RMT action, with big delays across all other lines.

RMT is mid way through a planned five days of all-out strike action across London Underground after long-running talks hosted by ACAS, aimed at settling the dispute over cuts to jobs, ticket offices and safety, were wrecked by a combination of management intransigence and the introduction of additional measures that actually worsened the original toxic package. It has also been made crystal clear to the union that this is just a first tranche of cuts with even harder attacks being lined up for the near future.

The RMT is today (2nd May, 2014) back at ACAS following the recent industrial action.

With strike action solid this morning, tube union RMT reminded Mayor Boris Johnson of his repeated promises not to close tube ticket offices – broken promises that run right to the heart of the dispute.

Asked last year about his plans to close a number of ticket offices across London, Boris Johnson's spokesperson said:

"This Mayor takes his promis es to Londoners extremely seriously. Every station that has a ticket office will continue to have one.”

RMT press briefing – the tube dispute in numbers

3%: The number of tickets the Mayor claims are sold by ticket offices.

23%: Total amount of ticket transactions ticket offices actually have responsibility for.

7.577 Million: The total transactions at ticket offices in 2013, an increase on the 7.418 million from 2012.

14% Projected increase in passenger numbers over the next five years.

17% Cut in the number of frontline station staff proposed by the Mayor.

In this 'strike special' edition:

• Striking back because Every Job Matters
• Myth & Fact
• TUC Supports our strike
• Stations today, drivers tomorrow?
• Think you can't afford to strike?

Tube strike action on as London Underground reject RMT proposals
Tube strike action starting this evening, over the closure of ticket office and the axing of safety-critical jobs, is on after London Underground management rejected a series of proposals from RMT negotiators that could have created the grounds for a suspension.
At talks convened through ACAS this morning, RMT set out a whole series of grounds which would have allowed progress to be made, the whole package was rejected out of hand by the London Underground management.

RMT Acting General Secretary Mick Cash said:

Dear Fellow RMT members,

Following on from the RMT National Executive's decision to call strike action for 48 hours on the 28/29/30th April and again for 72 hours on the 5/6/7/8th May, our negotiating group, led by myself, attended meetings and talks this week just gone.

Talks reveal cuts will affect all station staff. LU remains determined to cut 953 jobs and won’t guarantee to protect wages. It’s time to strike again!

In this edition:

• Why we need to keep fighting.....
• Q&A
• Everyone stands to lose: lowest grades could lose most
• Reasonable adjustments?