RMT press release, issued today

THE TUBE’S biggest union today began a re-ballot of nearly 10,000 members across London Underground and Transport for London for strike action in separate disputes centred on jobs, pay and breaches of disciplinary and attendance agreements.

The re-run of the strike ballots follows a provocative legal challenge by LUL to ballots last month, which nonetheless showed a rock-solid five-to-one majority in favour of action.

Up to 3000 jobs are under threat across the Tube and TfL.

Balloting begins today, Thursday 14th May and closes on Thursday 28th May

There are three areas of dispute:

On London Underground, bosses are threatening to tear up an agreement aimed at safeguarding jobs, and has refused to rule out compulsory redundancies. TfL is also threatening compulsory redundancies as part of a £2.4 billion cuts package.

LUL has also refused to budge from an unacceptable five-year pay offer that gives no real-terms increase for four years, and which could even see pay cut, and there have been so many complaints of breaches of disciplinary and attendance procedures they appear co-ordinated. TfL has so far failed to table any pay offer at all.

LUL management have been breaching the agreed disciplinary and attendance procedures and have encouraged aggressive and punitive behavior by local managers.

“Our members are furious that a democratic vote for action just over a month ago was sabotaged by a shameful legal challenge aimed at undermining the internal democracy of our trade union. Tube bosses have wasted time and money on lawyers when they knew very well that RMT would never tolerate this attack on our members and our organisation. The re-ballot gives our members a chance to express the depth of their anger, ” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

“If LUL and TfL want to avoid confrontation they should withdraw the threat to jobs, take the pay issue seriously and start treating staff with the respect that they deserve,” Bob Crow said.