RMT

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).

The action at Edinburgh's Waverly station was taken in a dispute over the provision of cover for breaks. David Simpson, of Network Rail in Scotland, said the "deliberately disruptive, unprovoked action" was "completely unacceptable".

Ian MacIntyre, the RMT's regional organiser for Scotland, was reported as saying: "Our members took the action in the interests of safety.

More than 375 Six Wilts and Dorset bus company drivers were walking out at midnight after talks failed.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union members at the Blandford, Bournemouth, Lymington, Poole, Ringwood and Swanage depots will strike for 24 hours in a protest against "excessive" working hours and are planning further walkouts on 8, 16 and 21 January.

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.

The strike by over 900 divers has entered its third day, and reports have been made that management are harrassing and intimidating workers in a bid to undermine the strike. Workers have been receiving intimidating phone calls at home urging them to return to work and sign individual contracts, a classic tactic used to break solidarity between strikers.

The workers will will not book on for shifts that commence between a minute after midnight and 23:59 on Thursday. Similar action is also scheduled for the following Monday, September 25th.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today:

The workers at South West Trains (SWT) walked out at midnight for a 24 hour strike over management scabbing during previous industrial action, when managers drove trains. The striking workers are mostly members of Aslef, with some RMT drivers also involved.

If the strike goes ahead it will be the first national shutdown of the rail network since 1926, involving tens of thousands of workers in every train operator, network rail and maintenance companies.

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.

This event was called at the last RMT conference to discuss the ‘crisis in working class representation’. This is definitely a real issue and problem, however the main problem was that for most who would be attracted to such an event, ‘working class representation’ means a 'workers party'.

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

An RMT organiser said they were unhappy that a deal agreed with managers had been blocked by the board.

Virgin CrossCountry, which operates between Penzance and Aberdeen, said the strike had less impact than planned engineering works.

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.