If you are a member of station staff you will for the most part experience the same problems whether you are in the SRT, Group Reserve or Rostered. Since the SRT came into existence 6 months ago there have been some minor tensions between some resident station staff and some SRT staff but for the most part we have all tried our best to get on and work together.

The fact of the matter is that the root cause of these tensions are not the individual members of staff but Management who are ignoring their own agreements made with the Unions. SRT staff are only suppose to cover special events i.e. concerts, football matches or projects i.e. assisting during escalator refurbishment but they have been put in positions where they are covering rostered duties which should be covered by resident station staff .The SRT staff are unable to oppose management on this as the Company are refusing to allow SRT staff union representation and are not allowing Tier1/Level 1 meetings with the Unions.

The fact is that all Station staff face the same problems from Management: displacements, bullying, abuses of discipline procedures, abuses of sickness procedures, shortages of staff, abuses of the Framework agreement, changing shifts at short notice, lack of flexible working, lack of promotion opportunities, lack of feedback from job assessments/interviews, lack of development opportunities, two tier staff travel system and poor messroom and changing facilities.

The point is that all Station staff have many issues which unite them and we should not allow management to play one set of workers off against the other. Criticising each other will not make the real problems go away, the only way we can effectively make a positive change to our working conditions is to challenge management. To do this we must stick together and organise in our workplaces and recruit non-union colleagues into our union, the RMT.