The Review of the Special Requirements Team took place on Monday 19 January 2009. This had been set up to look at how the SRT was running six months after it was established. However, your RMT reps were deeply dissatisfied with management's conduct of the review, which we believe leaves many of the issues important to SRT and other station staff unresolved.

However, we did find out some useful pieces of information. So read on to find out both the info and the problems …

Facts and figures

Mangement told us that:

• Demand for the SRT from stations is very high.
• The highest-demanding stations are Wood Lane, Moorgate and Shepherd's Bush (Central).
• SRT staff who are not required to meet a specific request on a particular day are sent to central London stations such as South Kensington and King's Cross as spares.
• SRT staff have so far recevied Thanks to You awards as follows: 51 instant, 14 bronze, 2 silver.
• 26 staff have nominated to transfer out of the SRT.
• There is a union noticeboard for SRT staff in the Griffin Rooms
• The SRT needs more staff at the weekends, so management are considering replacing vacant weekday part-time posts with weekend part-time posts.

Reviewing the numbers

One of the specific tasks of the review was to consider adjusting the numbers of staff in each zone. There is clearly a need to do this, as management reported that the numbers in the zones are not matching the demand. The greatest numbers are in the north-west zone but the greatest demand is in the north east zone.

However, rather than allow the review to consider adjusting the numbers, management simply informed us that the SRT Manager is considering this. So LUL is excluding your union from decisions that may effect where you work.

Deployment of SRT staff

We have had numerous problems with management using SRT staff when they are not supposed to eg. to cover rostered duties. Management admitted that this had occurred, and stated that there have been incidents where complaints had been made and SRT staff wtihdrawn.

While welcoming this admission, RMT is concerned that breaches of the rules should not happen in the first place. Otherwise, we suspect that management may be just trying to see what they can get away with, and withdrawing staff only when they are caught out.

We asked that LUL send out a briefing to all managers advising them in detail of the circumstances in which SRT staff can and can not be used. After some initial reluctance, management agreed.

We asked that the request form which GSMs send to SRT management - and which specifies the times, numbers, grades and reasons - should be copied to the station once it is completed, so it can be displayed for the information of all staff affected. At present it is only returned to the requester. Management agreed to consider this.

Management admitted that the incident in which SRT staff were deployed to Stratford station to cover resident staff attending a briefing was "pushing it too far". We asked for a further meeting to examine specific incidents such as this and others, with a view to preventing such abuses in future, but management refused.

What SRT staff do

The founding principle of the SRT is that it attends stations to give extra help for events and other special requirements. So this means that the SRT do only that extra work, and resident staff do their usual work. For example, if a station requires two SRT CSAs to give information and directions to customers in the ticket hall on the day of a football match, then the SRT CSAs do just that, and the resident station staff do their usual gateline, platform and other duties.

However, management announced at the review that they are breaking from this principle. Management now insist that "SRT staff are sent to a station because of the special requirement, but once there, can do whatever a local manager or supervisor tells them to".

RMT believes that this is grossly unfair on both the SRT and resident staff, as we are all entitled to know what we are doing at work each day, and not to be used as a 'dog's body'. We know that some of the tensions that have arisen between SRT and resident staff are because there is uncertainly as to who does what. Management's new position will just make that worse.

RMT will continue to oppose this, and strongly advises our members in both stations and SRT to insist on doing only the work to which you are deployed.

Rosters and union representation

Management told us that they are consulting staff about changing the rosters for the SRT. It is completely unacceptable that they are doing this without consulting union reps. But management are still refusing to recognise union reps in the SRT!

The dispute between the unions and management about union representation in the SRT is being discussed at a Director/Head office level.

In the meantime, management agreed that there would be no changes to the rosters until the issue of union representation was resolved.

Overtime

It was clarified that SRT staff do not do overtime. The only occasions on which they would receive extra payments would be:

• to cover travelling time when working out of their zone
• if they stayed on at the end of their duty due to unexpected need to do so.

What is a 'special requirement'?

RMT asked for discussions to agree a definition of a 'special requirement', as we hope this will prevent abuse of the SRT.

Management refused to even talk about it, and insisted that a special requirement is "whatever LUL deems it to be".

Moving duty times

The SRT's Framework Agreement states that early fixed links start between 0600 and 0800, and that late fixed links start between 1500 and 1700. During the talks about this Framework, management argued that if there was, say, a football match kicking off at 1200, they would rather have the option of deploying SRT staff on 'middle turns' rather than bringing in both earlies and late. On the basis of that argument, union reps agreed to a line in the Framework which allowed management to move duty start times by up to two hours.

Please note that any such change in duty start times is voluntary: you can refuse if you want to. If you do so, and get any grief or pressure from maangement, contact RMT immediately.

However, management are now abusing our agreement to this by moving early fixed links to dead early starts - not for midday football matches but for defective OPO equipment at Wood Lane.

RMT proposed that the Framework Agreement be amended to clarify that early fixed link start times could only be moved by up to two hours later, but management insisted that "It says what it says and we are not changing it". Given that one of the core purposes of the review was to consider changes to the Framework Agreement, this reply is utterly unreasonable, and defeats one of the main objects of the Review! It proved beyond doubt that management were not negotiating with us in good faith.

And then …

As you can see, several issues remained unresolved.

But to our shock, mangement then announced "This concludes the business of the SRT Review. Any outstanding issues will be raised within the existing machinery."

RMT of course pointed out forcefully that the review was very much not completed, but management were not interested. As far as they were concerned, they had gone through the motions, and having ignored most of our points, could now shut the whole thing down.

RMT will continue to argue strongly for the best possible rights for SRT and other station staff, but as you can see from this report, talking with LUL management will only get us so far.

It is now more important than ever that SRT and other station staff get active in the RMT, join if you are not already a member, and assert your rights at work.