Yesterday (28 January), there was a Level One meeting for Bank group, attended by me (RMT rep), the TSSA rep and the GSM. Official minutes will appear in due course. Issues discussed, and outcomes, included the following:

It was noted that staff were not give adequate notice of the new roster at St. Paul’s and Chancery Lane at the end of last year. You are entitled to 14 days notice of any change to the roster, and management committed that this will happen in future.

The 0730 CSA duty at St. Paul’s will be moved back to 0700, as the change to 0730 put the station in danger of falling below minimum numbers.

We registered a failure to agree over vacancies on the group not being filled. There will be two new CSAs starting next month, but there are several more vacancies on the group, with no sign of them being filled. This means an increased workload for our station staff, and real difficulties in running the stations. The unions argued that, in line with company policy, any vacancies should be filled immediately by the person at the top of the waiting list, but company-level management are refusing to do this. This issue will now be discussed at the Stations and Revenue Council next month.

The Chancery Lane refurbishment will be progressing again soon. It was delayed by one of the contractors involved going bankrupt and the job being re-tendered. For the unions, this underlines our view that refurbishments – and all other work – should be carried out by LUL/TfL itself, using directly-employed staff. It is not right that staff (or passengers) should suffer when a private contractor goes bust. I have asked ‘higher up’ RMT representatives to table this for discussion at functional or Company Council level.

We will soon be getting proper union noticecases for Chancery Lane, St. Paul’s and Bank (Central Line side).

The hectaphones in Holborn ticket office will not be replaced. It seems that management are not prepared to replace substandard ticket office equipment as they want to close the ticket offices.

There will be a PC installed in Holborn mess room; but not in the old control room, as this will be used for the forthcoming upgrade.

A reminder that Bank CSAs should be enabled to book off the dead late turn on time, despite the last DLR train running so close to closing time!

The issue of Holborn CSAs working on the platforms for more than two hours will be discussed at Tier 1 Health & Safety level, but it is anticipated that it can be addressed by a change to the duty schematic.

Janine Booth, Bank group rep