LUL Trains

by Vaughan Thomas, RMT Trains Council

National and local media often accuse Tube drivers of being overpaid and under worked. Whenever we have a dispute they trot out the old refrain that a trained monkey could do our job, and it’s about time that the Mayor took on the unions! Flogging’s too good for the likes of us!

They compare us to underpaid workers in the emergency services: the nurses, paramedics and firefighters and say we should be grateful for what we’ve got. How dare we ask for more!

by Bill O’Dowd, Trains Council

LUL management can’t get a new Attendance At Work policy, so say they will ‘enforce the existing one’. This means there will be no more ‘not normally counted items’ such as medical treatments at hospital, unless it is an emergency admittance!

Its official: no one seems to know!

After numerous meetings with management, Connect experts and a series of TETRA wave boffins, the Train’s Health and Safety Council are none the wiser about the effects of TETRA waves on the health of our members.

Given that we are mere drivers this is hardly surprising. More worryingly, at a recent TETRA conference organised by LU, the head of LU’s Occupational Health and an eminent expert in the field, brought in for a questions and answers stint, could not give guarantees about the safety of this new technology.

If you are not already aware, this is how the LU Health and Safety Machinery works: if Health and Safety problems or concerns arise locally, the first port of call is your local RMT health and Safety Representative at the Depot. They will raise these concerns with the local manager. If no resolution to the problem can be found, the matter will be referred to us at the Tier 2 Trains Safety Council. If we are unable to resolve the matter it then gets referred to LU Directors / RMT Head office level for them to resolve. Below is a snapshot of items currently being discussed at Tier 2.

Owing to the amount of upgrades with stock and signalling, LU last year allowed the RMT to appoint a dedicated Safety Rep solely to deal with new Upgrade issues. This Rep is Gwyn Pugh from Acton Town Depot.

He has supplied us an update of the burning issues that we will be facing soon.

Code Red: there are plans afoot for Controller to have the ability to stop trains immediately without having to call a „code red‟. The Controller will have a button on his desk that we only have to push for all trains to grind to a halt.

September's newsletter from RMT's Trains Health & Safety Council reps includes:

• your union's concerns about Tetra waves
• a report from the recent Tier 2 Trains Health & Safety meeting (ie. talks between drivers' union reps and management covering all LUL)
• news from the upgrades

.Click on the links above to read the articles. Click on the file name below to download and print the newsletter.

Now we must co-ordinate the action Come to the meeting: 19 August, 6.30pm Friends House, Euston Road, opposite Euston station Speakers: Bob Crow, and reps from all the disputes

By Steve Hedley, RMT London Transport Regional Council Secretary

Massive congratulations are in order for the RMT members who have organised effective strike action recently.

August's issue of 'RMT On The Trains' reports on lots of issues, including the new Victoria line stock, doubts about Connect radio safety, the Instructor Operator review, and LUL's attendance and discipline clampdown.

Click on the file name below to view, download and print it.

From 'RMT On The Trains' newsletter, August 2008

From 'RMT On The Trains' newsletter, August 2008

Another component of the new rulebook (guidelines!) is the introduction of the Competence assurance programme. This is being introduced to phase out the TD1 and TD2 system and instead we are going to have competence assessor DMTs (I know - a contradiction in terms!) who roam the system anonymously making sure we can drive trains and assessing things like making announcements and braking properly, etc over a two year period. Sneaky, huh!