The LU 'employee communications' bulletin issued on Wednesday implies that if the job cuts go ahead, staff will be displaced only within their current group. Here, RMT clarifies this claim ...

LU says:

• Posts will be reduced by around 800 (including 150 managers, administrators and support managers)
  
• Of the remaining 650 posts, we expect around 250 people in frontline station roles will be displaced once we have taken account of vacancies. Those affected will move to the reserve roster on their current group and we expect that within 18 months they will move back to a main roster.

The reality is:

• The phrase "once we have taken account of vacancies" means that management estimate 250 will be displaced to over-establishment on the group reserve after the other 400 have been displaced from their current location and grade to a location and grade they would not have voluntarily chosen to do. ie. many more than 250 staff will be displaced.
• The statement that staff will move to the reserve roster on their current group refers to a proposal currently under discussion, which has not yet been agreed, and for which much detail has not been revealed.
• Management have not guaranteed that after displacement, you will remain in your current grade. SAMFs could end up as CSAs, with earnings protected for only a limited period.
• Initially you may be displaced to over-establishment on group reserve, but within 18 months you could be moved to a station or group anywhere on the network. Remember two and a half years ago when LU forcibly displaced staff from Rickmansworth to locations all over the system, breaking their promises and their own agreements.
• There is no such thing as a 'reserve roster'. Reserve station staff are not on a roster: they have unpredictable duties, which are often changed at short notice, and which make it very hard to plan your life outside work. Displacement from a rostered to a reserve position is a serious deterioration of your working conditions.
• Moreover, reserves work over an often-large number of stations (which will become larger still under management's planned reorganisation of station groups). So displacement from a rostered to a reserve position could add hours per week to the time that you travel to and from work ie. your own time. (eg. If you are a rostered CSA at Ealing Broadway and your job is scrapped as LU plans, you could be working as far away as Shepherd's Bush.)