London Underground

Faced with the prospect of three days of strike action from 18:30 on Sunday, London Underground has abandoned plans that the union had described as a fundamental attack on Tube safety standards and casualisation of safety critical work.

The strike ballot saw 1,673 members vote for action with 333 voting against. The ballot result opens the way for joint action with fellow Tube union TSSA, whose own members voted for action earlier this month. The unions are opposing management attacks on safety standards and the casualisation of safety-critical work (details in notes below).

RMT today revealed that Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has agreed that the London Living Wage of £7.20 an hour will become the minimum for some 900 cleaners on former Metronet contracts from the moment TfL take charge of them.

For some cleaners paid only the minimum legal wage of £5.85 it will mean an increase of at least £1.35 an hour - well over 20%.

Trade unions have called a public meeting yesterday (Thursday) to fight the plans, which will see travellers unable to seek staff assistance at crucial times of the morning and night.

Strike action by more than 2,300 Metronet maintenance workers was suspended late last night after more than eight hours of talks between RMT, the failed company, its administrator and TfL yielded progress on the issues involved in the dispute.

The strikes were called after the company and its administrator failed to give the unequivocal guarantees on jobs, transfers and pensions that the union is seeking.

"The letter we have received from Metronet and the administrator falls way short of the guarantees our members need and deserve," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today

Metronet collapsed into administration recently, four years into a controversial PPP costing £17 billion. Jobs are going to be transferred to Bombardier, one of the stakeholders in the Metronet consortium.

The union is calling on the employers involved (list below) to guarantee that they will not bring forward or support proposed changes that would dramatically affect qualification for ill-health pensions.

Drivers and station staff walked off the job for 24 hours at 10pm last night (Thursday) over management plans to reduce the number of station staff available to remove passengers from trains. This has caused the closure of the Bakerloo line between Queens Park and Harrow and Wealdstone.

Blue Diamond, Britain's largest independent cleaning firm, had been paying about 400 workers £5.05 per hour instead of the agreed £5.50. The three year contract, which started in October last year, was for cleaning the District, Circle, Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City and East London lines.

This action will be co-ordinated with ASLEF, whose members voted for the same action in a separate ballot today.

Workers backed action over issues that include policy on signals passed at danger (Spads), health and safety, bargaining arrangements, harassment, discipline, denial of representation rights and imposition of excessive punishments.

Bob Crow announced new offer yesterday before members or union organisers knew anything about it.

This is Hertfordshire reported that there were severe delays on the Northern Line throughout Monday, but they had little to do with that day's Tube strike called by the RMT union in protest at safety concerns over the new roster to be introduced next month.

Half of LU's drivers are ASLEF members, and joint action would threaten a complete shutdown of the tube network - a marked difference from the strikes of RMT station staff on the 1 and 9 January.

The ASLEF press release stated:

The interview is presented here in full.

Why are station staff striking?
Contrary to public perception, it has nothing to do with greedy drivers!

In a separate action, the Northern Line - one of the busiest of the 12 lines - was shut down by the wildcat action of drivers who were supporting a sacked colleague

The BBC reported that when the strike ended at 1830 GMT a total of 19 stations remained closed and two tube lines were having delays.

Daniel O’Rourke takes a detailed look at the action, the unions, the workers and the government.

As a result of the strike about 40 out of London’s 275 stations were closed, including Covent Garden in the heart of London’s West End and King’s Cross, one of the capital’s busiest stations.

New year's eve strike account here:
http://libcom.org/news/article.php/underground-new-year-strike-04012006