London Underground management has admitted that it does not employ enough reserve station staff to cover all the duties that need covering. This means that it either relies on existing staff doing overtime, or it leaves duties uncovered, sometimes resulting in ticket offices being closed, staff working alone, or stations left completely unstaffed.

LUL calculates the number of reserves in each grade and location as 37½% of the number of rostered staff. So, for example, if you had 29 rostered CSAs on a group, you would have 11 reserve CSAs. Station staff know that this is not enough - we know how often duties are left uncovered or worked on overtime. We also know that managers regularly refuse staff secondments, training and development opportunities or special leave requests because of lack of coverage.

In addition, there have been several laws over recent years that give workers more right to time off - for example, more parental leave and emergency domestic leave. The fact that these legal entitlements to leave are unpaid means that the company not only needs to employ more reserves, but should be better able to afford to do so.

So last year, RMT tabled a proposal to LUL to review and increase the percentage figure. Management agreed to look at the issue, and after several delays due to problems with the information they presented, the issue finally came back to the Stations & Revenue Council in June. What did management say?

• that the percentage is calculated by a formula that includes the average number of shifts uncovered for reasons including leave, training, sickness, etc;
• that according to their formula, it should actually be 40%, but they don't want to employ that many, so as part of the 35-hour week, they fixed it at 37½% instead;
• that they agree that it should probably be even higher than 40% because of the recent legal changes that RMT mentioned;
• but that, despite all this, they were not willing to increase the percentage and number of reserve staff because they "don't have the money".

And what did RMT say in reply?

• that it is unacceptable for funding issues to stand in the way of safe staffing levels;
• that London Underground is supposed to be a public service, and should be prepared to spend money on providing the world-class customer service that it claims to aspire to;
• that the company is already saving money through unpaid leave, and would save more in overtime if it employed enough reserves;
• that if LUL needs more money, then it should ask the Mayor!

Management seemed to fear funding cuts from the new Mayor, so we explained that asking for more money is a very good way of fending off possible cuts. Management are going to think about that.

In the meantime though, RMT's demands have exposed the truth about Tube station staffing: that London Underground Ltd has a deliberate policy of employing too few staff to cover even the skeleton staffing levels on our stations.