On Wednesday 17 June, RMT protested outside Mayor's Question Time against Tube cleaners' poverty pay. Protesters demanded that Mayor Boris Johnson keep his promise that everyone working for the GLA or in its areas of responsibility would receive the London Living Wage, recently uprated to £7.60 an hour.
On Friday, RMT representatives Olly New, Brian Whitehead, Paul Jackson (pictured), Bob Crow and Janine Booth attended ACAS to discuss the LUL dispute.
The idea was to exchange paperwork for further talks. The RMT brought the 2001 dispute settlement ('jobs for life' deal) and associated documents that prove beyond doubt that it applies to all employees of London Underground, the Infracos and subsidiaries.
LUL brought nothing.
The new issue of 'RMT Platform' reports on station staff's solid participation in RMT's strike for jobs, pay and justice. It also gives information on our campaign for snow day pay, London Underground's backdoor job cuts, the new Ticket Office Procedures Handbook, and the 'Textback' trial flop. Plus there is advice on station and revenue staff's rights.
Click '1 attachment' / file name to download it.
Key media commentators are now accepting RMT’s calculation that the total financial black hole facing TfL/LUL is pushing £5 billion with 3000 jobs at risk. This week we exposed £60 million of maintenance cuts on former Metronet lines. We achieved widespread coverage for our case that these cuts are the tip of the iceberg with far worse to come if we don’t stand up and fight.
It’s this financial crisis which is driving the industrial relations strategy at TfL and LUL and which goes right to the heart of the current disputes with the employers.
We have learnt that TfL’s annual report, due to be published next week, will confirm that the number of senior managers earning over £100,000 a year has gone up from 123 to 163 in the past year, an increase of nearly one third. If you include Metronet and Crossrail, which is now part of TfL, the number of managers earning six figures plus goes up to 231. These figures don’t even include the huge sums that are being paid out to management consultants.
The RMT has been advised that Jenny Jones AM pressed Boris Johnson on Wednesday at Mayor’s Question Time that TfL should meet with Tubelines and RMT on the London Living Wage.
He reportedly responded that there were 50 cleaners who were not in receipt of the London Living Wage but that has now been resolved satisfactorily.
We have been negotiating with LUL on the new New Ticket Office Procedures Handbooks for over a year now and they have been introduced without due consideration to our comments and concerns. We have real fears that the original TOPH is being watered down to make it easier to reduce ticket office hours, close ticket offices and get rid of SAMF and SS jobs.
The latest membership figures for RMT in the London Transport region show that workers are joining the union at the rate of over 60 per week.
We had 12,950 members in the Region on 30 April 2009, increasing to 13,146 by 31 May and 13,306 by 18 June.
The shocking figures below show Transport for London (TfL) and London Underground Ltd (LUL)'s total spend fighting employee Employment Tribunal claims from August 2004 to the end of 2008 (not including cost of staff and management time and TfL/LUL operational resources).
These illustrate two things:
The truth of the success of the 48 hour strike last week is starting to get through. Tonight’s Standard, the paper at the forefront of hostility to RMT, reports that:
“There was widespread disruption across the capital. Although London Underground was able to operate some trains, on most lines this was often limited to shuttle services.”
RoadTransport.com reported that: