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Call This A Pay Offer?!
London Underground has tabled a five-year pay offer of RPI+1% in the first year followed by RPI only for the remaining four.
This looks like a pay freeze - which would be bad enough - but is actually a year-on-year pay cut. RPI systematically under-estimates real inflation as it affects workers, so in real terms, this insulting offer cuts your pay each year. RPI is low now because the prices of luxury goods are tumbling. But our everyday expenditure on food and bills is still going up.
So London Underground would have you spend more and more each year, with no more money to do it with. Your employer would willingly see you get poorer and poorer. And all the while, you are making them richer and richer: our productivity is rising sharply, as we carry more passengers and bring in more revenue.
At 'Valuing Time', senior managers tell us how great we are. But while we like being praised, we'd rather be paid!
A top LUL/Metronet manager has stated that "A reduction in wages will be reviewed in regard to a further deterioration of the current economic climate, backdated to the April", so we may face a pay cut not just in real terms but in hard cash.
RMT will not accept top managers on well over £100k per year telling the staff who keep the railway running that we have to suffer this attack on our living standards.
Absurdly, LUL claims that we should have a multi-year deal because the economy is so unpredictable. In contrast, that's exactly the reason why we should negotiate pay each year. Under LUL's offer, we could be nailed to the spot while a storm rages all around us.
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Adding insult to injury, London Underground also plans to get rid of 1,000 jobs. Although these are non-operational posts, station and revenue staff will feel the knock-on effect as we lose essential 'backroom' support.
To allow them to slash these jobs, LUL is trying to scrap the agreement that RMT won in 2001 that there would be no compulsory redundancies. If the company succeeds in doing this, then none of our jobs are safe.
Last year, RMT members fought off attempts to close ticket offices and introduce mobile Station Supervisors, which would have cost jobs in both SAMF and SS grades. The company would love to try these and other job-cutting ideas again, and if we allow admin job cuts to go unchallenged, we will be making it that much easier for them to do so.
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In stations and revenue grades, we know full well how managers persecute sick staff and break their own procedures to create a climate of fear at work. It is high time to call a halt.
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RMT is holding a ballot of all its members on London Underground Ltd for industrial action to fend off these three attacks and demand jobs, pay and justice. If we do not fight back now, then management will walk all over our hard-won rights. So make sure that you vote Yes - and get active in our campaign too!
Your RMT Stations and Revenue Council representatives: click on their names or photos to send them an email.
Janine Booth 07748-760261

Neil Cochrane (staff side chair) 07739-869867
Mick Crossey 07834-117509
John Kelly 07740-065367
Malcolm Taylor (staff side secretary) 07748-933241





