RMT (and TSSA) are fighting for a very simple but very important principle:

Every London Underground station should be staffed to an adequate level by fully-trained, directly-employed LUL staff with secure terms and conditions.

Sadly, London Underground management do not agree. Instead they plan ...

To abandon the principle of 24/7 station supervision.

Management want some stations to have supervisors on duty only between 6am and 8pm, with private security guards on the stations from 8pm to 6am. The company claims that this is ‘a move away from the idea of mobile supervision’ – but for 40+% of the day, it is a move to NO supervision! It will mean:

• Fewer station supervisor jobs; fewer promotion opportunities for other station grades
• No qualified railway staff on duty in the evening, overnight or early in the morning
• No help for drivers or other grades – or passengers – during incidents such as one-unders, PEAs, security alerts, operating problems etc
• A threat to supervision at all other stations. If LUL imposes this at the ex-Silverlink stations, it will have broken the principle of 24/7 supervision, and will soon do it at other stations too.

To continue using agency staff and security guards.

Instead of directly-employed staff, LUL will keep using staff from private agencies, who have no job security, lower pay, and fewer rights than LUL staff have in areas such as paid leave and sick pay. The agencies do not train them to London Underground standards, so they can not do the work as well or offer the right support to other grades. We have nothing against these staff: we want LUL to offer them proper jobs and stop hiring them through agencies.

If LUL establishes the use of agency and security staff on any stations, then it will spread the practice. It will set up a regime where a core of overworked LUL staff are supplemented by under-paid casual workers hired from agencies.

To allow LUL work at Heathrow Terminal 5 station to be done by non-LUL staff.

The British Airports Authority owns T5, subcontracts its staffing to Heathrow Express, which sub-subcontracts it to an agency! These staff will work on the LUL platforms, carrying out duties such as detrainments. Fancy working as a CSA at T5? Tough. If LUL gets away with this, any new station, line or extension could be staffed by private firms.

LUL claims that T5 is a ‘unique situation’ and that the station’s owner should staff it. But at Highbury & Islington, Bank, Moorgate and other LUL stations, other companies staff their own platforms. Why not for the LUL platforms at T5?

To continue forcing Bakerloo detrainment staff to work alone.

LUL could easily have settled the ongoing Bakerloo line detrainment dispute, simply by agreeing that in the rare event of a member of staff being left alone, the service would be detrained at an earlier station. But the company would not give in – because they want the ‘flexibility’ to make staff work alone in vulnerable situations.

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Recent talks had seen a little progress on a few issues. But LUL has dug in – it is determined to cut and casualise its workforce, to import the exploitative, unsafe and disastrous practices of the private rail industry onto the public Tube. Talking will not get us any further. We now need to take action. TSSA has already retuned an 81% majority for strike action. Now we need RMT members to deliver an equally resounding mandate to fight these attacks.

You will receive a ballot paper asking you if you are prepared to take strike action, and action short of strike action. This is not an either/or question. Vote YES to both, and give your union the mandate we need to effectively defend our members.