New Stations Rosters - Minus Jobs!

London Underground’s new stations rosters - minus hundreds of jobs - are due to come in on 6 February. Staff will be expected to work even more anti-social hours with staffing levels so low that stations will struggle to cope. Ticket offices will be open for significantly shorter hours, causing huge extra workload for staff in the ticket hall and elsewhere around the station - and yet, despite LU’s claims, their numbers are being cut too.

There will be hundreds fewer station staff available to assist drivers, service control or engineers during incidents and emergencies. We expect these job cuts will be followed by even more in stations and other grades - the company has admitted as much already.

Keeping Up The Fight

RMT and TSSA continue to oppose these job cuts. The unions have not called further strike dates at present, but continue to take ‘action short of strikes’ to keep the pressure on management.

The two unions are taking part in a review of the job cuts, overseen by the conciliation service ACAS, which we hope will lead to many of the cut jobs being restored. There are four strands to the review:

• safety
• issues raised in collective grievances by local union reps
• ticket offices
• equalities

You can ensure that the problems that the job cuts are causing you are raised in this review by talking to your RMT rep.

If you think that your station or your working conditions have become less safe, if your new roster is more antisocial, if your ticket office opening hours do not meet customer demands, if you feel that you or others are being discriminated against, tell your rep, who will pass on the information to the functional council reps who are taking part in the review.

Discrimination Against Part-Time Staff?

London Underground has issued notices displacing full-time staff only within the group of stations in which they currently work, but has issued notices displacing part-time staff to locations beyond their current group of stations, in some cases some distance away. It also intends to alter the working hours of some part-time staff in a way that is detrimental to them, and has failed to adequately consider part-time workers in its Equality Impact Assessment.

RMT believes that LU may be breaking the law which bars employers from treating part-time workers less favourably. If you are one of the part-time staff affected, please speak to your RMT rep or email janine@rmtlondoncalling.org.uk immediately.

Unstaffed Stations Breach Safety

RMT has called for a full investigation into breaches of safety on London Underground after the union’s safety reps revealed that stations along the Central Line were left unstaffed during the weekend of 22/23 January due to cuts-led staff shortages.

Buckhurst Hill, Theydon Bois, Debden, Chigwell and North Acton were all left unstaffed. In a flagrant breach of safety regulations, both North Acton and Debden were left without a Supervisor even though they have points at the stations which are required to be under the watch of the Station Supervisor at all times.

On the Monday morning, hundreds of thousands of London commuters faced a chaotic journey as signal failures knocked out large sections of the Jubilee and Metropolitan lines leading to severe delays in the latest of a continuing list of infrastructure failures over-shadowed by TFL’s £5 billion cuts programme.

Passenger Attacked At Unstaffed Station

A customer was assaulted whilst West Finchley station was left unstaffed on the evening of Sunday 16 January.

Passengers tried to get assistance for the victim who was kicked and beaten by four men, but were unable to get help as the station was unstaffed. This incident followed the release by RMT of LUL documents revealing that nearly a third of stations could at times be unstaffed.

RMT alerted the press to this shocking incident, and the Evening Standard ran the story on its front page, stating that ‘The attack brought immediate demands for employee cuts to be halted and stations to be staffed all the time trains are running.’