Coronavirus

23rd April 2021

Dear colleagues

London Transport Region - RMT mass meeting, Monday 26th April at 5pm

With reference to the above, a meeting will be taking place via Zoom. The meeting will be covering:

• No Job losses
• Defend the TfL pension
• No deterioration in conditions

You've helped keep the tube moving throughout the Covid pandemic and the Union believes you should not accept your job, terms or pension being sacrificed to pay for the economic costs of Covid.

Speakers to include:

ABYSMAL AS USUAL. Some AMs are endangering our members’ health and safety by trying to tear up the Covid working arrangements on stations without consultation with our reps.

For more than a year the RMT has sought to keep our members safe at work whilst still delivering a service during the pandemic.

• Please download the attached leaflet to get all the latest information and advice from your union, RMT.

Following the companies recent response to RMT reps raising concerns about CEV and CV staff returning to the workplace, your regional organiser has written to the company making it clear that we reject their position and believe it is unsafe.

Central Line East News is produced by activists if Central Line East branch.

In this edition:

- Covid in the Workplace
- Pensions Under Attack
- branch meeting details

Please download the attached newsletter for more info.

As vaccine programme hits initial targets RMT calls for escalation of priority and protection for transport workers

With the news at the weekend that the initial phase of the COVID vaccination programme has hit its targets RMT called this morning for an escalation in priority for transport staff and other essential workers to ensure that those groups risking the highest levels of occupational exposure, and who are also pivotal to the route map out of the current lockdown, are properly protected. 

General Secretary Mick Cash said;

RMT blasts TfL for calling on staff in South African variant postcodes to come into work as normal.

RMT has written to TfL Commissioner Andy Byford condemning its guidance that workers in postcodes being targeted for surge testing aimed at bringing the South African variant of Covid19 to heel, should come into work as normal.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said;

“This Financial Sustainability Plan is a massive missed opportunity and a capitulation to Tory austerity. TfL could have used this moment to aggressively make the case for setting its funding on a completely new basis, recognising the failure of fare box model and making the case for public funding that recognises the public interest in London’s mass transit system.

LONDON TRANSPORT UNION RMT today wrote to London Mayor Sadiq Khan demanding that he come clean on what plans TfL are putting to the government in order to secure more funding in March. 

As part of the deal made at the end of last year, Sadiq Khan agreed to submit to the DfT proposals for returning the body to ‘financial sustainability’ following the devastation of its finances by the Covid-19 pandemic. This plan was submitted to the DfT yesterday but unions have not yet seen them.

RMT demands urgent action to protect TfL workers as new Covid variant runs rampant

TRANSPORT UNION RMT is demanding immediate action by Transport for London amid the surge in London’s cases of Covid infection and the rise of new variant Covid and the deaths of at least three TfL workers in recent days.

The union has written to both the Mayor of London and London Underground calling for an urgent upscaling of safety measures to protect staff. In the letter the union demands: