Congratulations to station staff at Willesden Green who have voted yes for strike action and action short of a strike by a margin of 3 :1 with a turn out in excess of 50%.The dispute centres around a breakdown of industrial relations resulting from management ignoring Discipline and Attendance procedures and bullying our members.

This result came despite unprecedented intimidation of our members and attacks on our Reps. Ridiculous circulars were released by management,members were approached by DSM's who insisted they tell them what way they were voting,the reps were accused of buying votes,a fictitious RMT member by the name of 'Sarah Bradford' who claims to work on the group wrote a poisonous email attacking our Union and both the local RMT and TSSA Rep and revealed private information about individuals which we know only management are privy to.

What is clear from this dispute is that Management are reeling from the concerted and organised response from our members. They are so deluded with their own propaganda that they find it incomprehensible that humble station staff should dare challenge their methods. They are panicking over our request for the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate management's practices on the group. Of course this will sound very familiar to train drivers at North Greenwich where in 2004 the same manager Barbatunde Taiwo caused a dispute using the same methods,even making it onto the Evening Standard with the headline “Tube boss blamed for strike”.

One wonders whether the said managers abuses would pass the much acclaimed 'Evening Standard test' supposedly applied by Employee Relations to potential disputes?
In the meantime a local strike committee will be meeting to name dates for the action.

A leaflet for staff on the group is available to download from this page