Last month, a local RMT rep asked, Who polices our agreements?. Reps are sick of seeing managers break their own rules and disregard decisions made at the Stations & Revenue Council.

So at the last meeting of the Council, on 18 June, RMT demanded a robust system to esnure that managers obey the rules. Our agreements might not be perfect, but they are better than a state of chaos in which managers can treat staff exactly as the whim takes them.

Management had to agree that in the event that your RMT Stations & Revenue Council reps heard about a manager breaking rules, the rep can contact two named managers at Employee Relations, who will investigate the case and correct the manager involved if necessary. If the manager ignores their advice, the case will be escalated to senior management, starting with the Chair of the Stations & Revenue Council.

Management also assured us that at the end of each Stations & Revenue Council meeting, they send a briefing note to all their local managers telling them about issues discussed and what they needed to do to implement them. However, they refused our request to:

• send the unions a copy of these briefing notes, and
• introduce a system of checking that managers receive and acknowledge the briefing notes - after all, management routinely make staff sign for documents that they issue to us;
• make failure to comply with policies a performance and/or disciplinary offence for managers.

It seems that there is one rule for managers, another for the rest of us.

It remains to be seen whether we have established a system that will actually protect staff from wayward managers.