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Station & Revenue Council News: Station staff, fight to defend train prep

Currently, our trains are “prepped” (i.e., have basic safety checks performed) every 24 hours. LU now wants to extend that schedule to every 96 hours, or even more.
On some lines their proposals suggest that trains will only be fully prepped every 82 days.

These cuts would have severe consequences for staff, and the public. For station staff, this means that trains will be travelling through our stations that have not had their doors or brakes tested for days or even weeks. This put us as greater risk of incidents and having to detrain. If you work at a station with reduced staffing levels, or a lone working station, this could lead to highly dangerous situations. This is also an attack on the jobs of our brothers and sisters in fleet depots. If LU extends train prep schedules by three times or more, what’s the betting they decide they need three times fewer workers to do it?

When massive cuts were proposed on stations under Fit for the Future, RMT balloted members in all grades. Workers in fleet, engineering, signals, and other areas struck with us because they knew cuts on stations would have an impact on their own work, and because what hits one area today will inevitably hit another area tomorrow.

Fundamentally they struck because, in an industrial, all-grades union, an injury to one is an injury to all. RMT is currently preparing to ballot members in fleet grades for action to resist extended train prep, but it may be necessary to escalate the dispute.

If so, station staff must prepare to take action to defend train prep – in solidarity with fleet workers, to resist a cut that will make our own work less safe, and to stand
up for passenger safety.

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