• Picketers may wish to use the attached leaflet to explain to passengers why we are striking.

WHY WE ARE STRIKING

Tube workers have worked throughout the pandemic to keep an essential service running. Our roles don’t allow us to work from home.

Now our employer wants to make us pay for a financial crisis we didn’t create with cuts to jobs and conditions, including pensions.
 

Tube workers in all roles - drivers, station staff, engineers, service controllers, and others - are striking to stop job cuts, to defend our conditions, and protect our pensions.

In 2018, the Tories abolished TfL’s funding. When fare revenue collapsed during the pandemic, short-term bailouts from government came with multiple conditions. These included insisting TfL identify job cuts, review working arrangements, and review our pension scheme. Sadly, our bosses have complied with the Tories’ demands.

DID YOU KNOW?

• LU wants to cut 600 frontline positions from Tube stations
• TfL says it needs to make £500 million of cuts every year to be “self-financing”
• TfL is the only system of its type not to receive regular funding
• TfL relies on fares for 75% of its regular revenue. By comparison, only 38% of the New York subway’s revenue comes from fares.

WHAT WILL CUTS MEAN FOR YOU?

Imagine your experience as a passenger with 600 fewer station staff. Although LU says it will manage cuts via deleting vacancies rather than compulsory redundancies, this will still mean a reduction of over 10% in the total stations workforce.

This will make the Tube less accessible and less safe, especially for disabled passengers. LU plans to cut platform for duties for station staff, meaning they won’t be on the spot to manage congestion and respond to incidents.

If these cuts go ahead, other jobs cuts will likely follow, along with possible service cuts, meaning trains will be less frequent.

LU’s imposition of new agreements, which seek to maximise “flexibility”, and give more power to change our shift times and locations, will lead to increased staff fatigue, which will have a knock-on effect on passenger safety.

DEFENDING PENSIONS

TfL is reviewing our pension scheme. We have a good, final-salary pension scheme, in excellent financial condition. TfL wants to reduce the cost of the pension scheme as part of its drive for cuts. We don’t accept we should pay for the funding gap via cuts to our pensions.

A FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT

We want our employer to abandon planned cuts. We want Mayor Khan to join us in demanding adequate funding from government.

Currently the funding gap is around £2bn per year. During the pandemic, the number of billionaires in Britain has reached a record high. Their wealth increased by 21.7%.

Rather than forcing workers to pay, we believe this money should be taxed to fund services such as public transport.

We know our strikes cause inconvenience. This is an inevitable consequence of transport workers withdrawing our labour. But if TfL and LU’s cuts go ahead, passengers will face a de-staffed service and the possibility of what Sadiq Khan has called “managed decline”. This will cause far greater inconvenience in the long run.

We urge you to support our strikes. If you’re facing attacks on terms and conditions in your own workplace, we urge you to organise via a trade union and fight back. You can count on the support of the RMT.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

• Write to Sadiq Khan to tell him you support the RMT’s demands: mayor@london.gov
• Write to Transport secretary Grant Schapps to tell him to support decent funding for TfL: shappsg@parliament.uk
• Join more than 10,000 others in signing our petition in defence of public transport: bit.ly/tfl-petition
• Join a union in your own workplace if you’re not a member of one already: tuc.org.uk/joinunion
• Picketers may wish to use the attached leaflet to explain to passengers why we are striking.