Attached is London Underground's 'Strategic Plan' to cut our jobs. Below are some comments from myself. Your comments are welcome.

Pages 3-9 show the company's plan to reorganise station groups. Here you can see the increased number of stations LUL will expect you to work at if you are a reserve, the extra distances LUL expects you to travel to and from work in your own time, and the extra stations' duty allocations you will have to look after if you are an AG1. So - more work, less life: "work-life balance" is definitely tipping in the "work" direction!

Pages 10-18 outlines management's plan to cut ticket office and gateline staffing.

Pages 11-14 deal with ticket offices. As expected, the company's key argument is that increasing take-up of Oyster means that it does not need ticket offices open for as much time. However:

• The scale of cuts in window opening times and job cuts that LUL proposes significantly exceeds the reduction in window transactions. On page 17, LUL admits that it plans to reduce "service hours" (assumed to mean window opening hours) by 35% despite the fall in window transactions being 28%.
• On page 12, LUL admits an increase in use of passenger-operated machines of 47%, which is significantly more than the 28% fall in window sales, but LUL does not take into account the fact that it is ticket office staff who service these machines. If work has moved away from the window, it has often only gone as far as the POM room!
• The chart on page 13 shows that Oyster take-up, having previously risen, is now actually falling.
• On the same page, LUL admits that it has a deliberate policy of driving business away from the window through eg. the £5 minimum top-up.
• On page 14, we can see LUL's skewed maths! Apparently, a 28% fall in window sales justifies a 100% increase (from 25% to 50%) in the BNS threshold for ticket office opening. This is the measure that LUL uses to decide whether a ticket office should be open at a particular time or not: the company has doubled the height of the bar.
• LUL's analysis takes no account of the role of an open ticket office window in providing information and reassurance to passengers, especially as the ticket office window cuts are accopmanied by a decrease rather than an increase in ticket-hall staffing.
• Most importantly, LUL is trying to reduce ticket office opening hours, but is not starting from a point where current opening hours are adequate. Staff and passengers know that there are often long queues at ticket offices when they are open, and many frustrated customers when they are not. LUL should seek to use new technology to reduce these queues and improve its service, enabling staff to deliver the 'world-class customer service' that it claims to aspire to. Instead, it is using new technology as a pretext to cut opening hours and maintain an inadequate service.

Pages 15 and 16 deal with gateline / ticket hall staffing.

There is quite an irony here. During the 35-hour week staffing negotiations in 2005-6, LUL insisted on using numbers of customers through gates as the sole figure for deciding on staffing numbers, using it as an excuse to cut gateline staff in many locations. RMT reps pointed out that this bare figure does not take account of other factors that would illustrate customers' needs eg. luggage; young children; familiarity with the Underground; impairment; vulnerability etc. LUL dismissed the reps' arguments.

Now, LUL is admitting that these factors are important, but is using them to justify further cuts in gateline staffing!

These two pages reveal that LUL plans to introduce a new 'model' for determining staffing levels, replacing the current BNS formula. It has created a model which produces lower staffing levels, without giving any actual justification for the staffing cuts. In other words, it is not determining staffing levels on the basis of any real factors - rather, it has decided to cut staff and then created a model that will generate that outcome.

We all know that ticket hall staff work very hard, especially during the peak hours when LUL wants to cut them most. We also know that at any time, CSAs can be called on to deal with incidents from assisting a disabled passenger to evacuating the station. The proposed cuts will seriously damage London Underground's ability to hep its customers and to ensure their safety and security.

You can read comments on the section about managers and admin here.

Click '1 attachment' / file name to view management's document. Some of the pages may appear sideways, but if you are viewing it in Adobe Reader, go to View -> Rotate View -> Clockwise, that should set it straight!