On October 18th, RMT (and TSSA) representatives met with LUL management at the Stations & Revenue Functional Council meeting. Here are some of the issues discussed:

• Management want to introduce 'Wide Aisle Gates', an automated version of manual gates, but refused to give a guarantee that this would not be a pretext for reducing staffing levels on the gateline. Because of this, and because of some safety concerns, RMT and TSSA failed to agree with LUL on this issue, and referred it to an Ad Hoc Directors' meeting.
• Management agreed to RMT's request to review, with a view to increasing, the percentage they use to calculate the number of reserve staff in each grade and group.
• Management agreed with RMT that local managers should not cancel overtime with less than 24 hours' notice. If the duty you volunteered to cover no longer requires covering at short notice, you still get to come in to work and get paid for doing it.
• RMT and management reps will be visiting Harrow group to discuss with local managers and union reps the problems they are having with reserve staff being messed around.
• RMT grilled management about their plans for graduate stations training, which revealed huge problems, for example graduate trainees going straight into SS1 duties without adequate training or any other station experience! RMT is to meet the manager in charge of this as a matter of urgency.
• We agreed to have a separate meeting between unions and management about the staffing of the King's Cross Thameslink station which is due to transfer to LUL in December.
• Management continue to fail to address the grievances of Prestige coaches. This has been dragging on for years, so we have referred it to an Ad Hoc Directors' meeting to get it resolved.
• Management have agreed that staff can do overtime for special events on groups other than their own, and that local budgets should allow for this.
• Management agreed to RMT's demand that staff on probation should be allowed to apply for promotion.
• Management agreed to RMT's demand that 'development oppportunities' for CSAs to learn about the Station Assistant Control Room (SACR) job should be open to all CSAs, not just those on the small number of stations that currently offer this oppportunity.
• The new grade of SACR Coach will be ratified at November's Company Council and the post created by the next pay period. The advert has already been prepared and the relevant information is being loaded into SAP.
• Management confirmed that external recruitment of SAMFs has been stopped.
• Staff whose flexible working application is refused, and whose appeal is refused, can make a further appeal to the Staff Movements Committee. Management agreed to RMT's request to confirm this and remind managers.
• RMT complained of incidents where managers had visited sick staff at home with no prior notification. Management agreed that this was unacceptable and will remind managers to follow the correct procedure.
• RMT complained of incidents where cleaning contractors had asked Station Supervisors to fax Visitors' Log sheets to them so they could check up on their cleaners. Management agreed that this is unacceptable and will write to both station staff/managers and to the cleaning companies to stop this happening.
• TSSA argued that reserve staff could not be allocated spare turns longer than rostered shifts as a way of making them do their full hours. RMT supported them. Management agreed.
• The previous day's Stations Complexity meeting had agreed to do joint union/management site visits to the stations due to transfer - in whole or in part - from Silverlink. First priority will be West Brompton.

In summary ... We stopped some bad things, won some good things, and identified some things that we may need to fight about!