RMT is heading towards a showdown with LUL management over its plans to de-staff our stations and casualise our workforce. In the new year, we will be balloting you for strike action. Here, RMT Platform answers your questions about the issues.

• What issues is RMT concerned about?
  • Mobile station supervision.
  • Use of security guards.
  • Use of agency staff.
  • Ticket office cuts and closures.
  • LUL work done by non-LUL staff.
  • Lone working, particularly by detrainment staff.
  • External recruitment to some grades.

  We believe that these add up to a concerted attempt by London Underground Ltd to reduce and casualise its workforce.

• What is ‘mobile station supervision’?

  Instead of each station having a Supervisor on duty, some stations will be organised into groups, with a Supervisor ‘flitting about’ (in one manager’s words) between them. Result: CSAs on duty unsupervised; no Supervisor on site to deal with incidents. It will risk safety, place unreasonable demands on all grades of staff, and lead to job cuts.

• What’s the problem with security guards?

  LUL is using them instead of Station Supervisors on some stations, to do work that should be done by Supervisors, for example closing and opening stations and reporting incidents. They are not railway staff and can not do operational railway work. They are supplied by a private agency, paid £7.50 per hour (a third of an SS1’s pay rate) and work a 48-hour week, the legal maximum.

• What’s the problem with agency staff?

  They are also supplied by a private agency, which pays them much less than LUL rates. They do not have the permanent contracts that we have, with important rights such as holiday entitlement, sick pay and a decent pension scheme.

• The national rail uses agency staff and security guards. What effect has this had?

  Pay rates and working conditions for station staff are much worse than on the Tube. Staffing levels are even lower, with many stations unstaffed and neglected, with passengers scared to use them.

• So you want to kick the agency staff off the stations? That seems unfair to them.

  No, we want LUL to give them proper jobs. If they are good enough to work on our gatelines, they are good enough to have the same pay and contracts as the rest of us. Kick out the agencies, not the staff!

• What’s happening with the ticket office cuts and closures?

  LUL has delayed implementation until next autumn. But it still intends to go ahead with the vicious cuts and closures once the Mayor and GLA elections are out of the way.

• What’s happening with Heathrow Terminal 5?

  It will be staffed not by LUL but by the airport authority, which will use agency staff as well as direct employees. They will have staff doing LUL work eg. assisting drivers with operational procedures, but who are not LUL-employed staff.

  Your union believes that LUL work should be done by directly-employed LUL staff.

• Aren’t these issues just about a few ex-Silverlink stations and Heathrow T5? How do they effect everyone else?

  Your station could be next!

  RMT has seen a company document that refers to ‘future wider roll-out’ of these practices. Management admit that they want to use agency staff for special events at stations across the Underground, following their own failure to set up the ‘special events team’ that was agreed as part of the 35-hour week and which would have created up to 200 jobs.

  It is no use allowing management to pick us off one line, one group, or one station at a time. We all need to stand together against these attacks.

• Why is LUL recruiting some grades externally? Won’t this harm my promotion chances?

  Yes it will. LUL claims there are too few internal applicants good enough for drivers’ and service control jobs. RMT believes that this is an insult to your skills and professionalism.

  There are other explanations for the shortage of people passing promotional applications and training - the chaotic promotion system run by the private company Reed for the last few years, and some over-intense training courses.

• What do you mean by ‘casualisation’?

  LUL is trying to reduce the number of LUL employees in secure jobs and instead have the work done by other people - security guards patrolling stations, agency staff on gatelines, newsagents selling tickets.

  Their employment is more casual and therefore more vulnerable.

  LUL’s plans will divide the workforce, with different people doing the same work on different pay and conditions. And it will make it harder for the union to organise and collectively represent all workers.

• How will this affect me at work?

  You may be displaced. You may find yourself ‘floating’ between more than one station. You may have to work alone if other posts on your station are scrapped. Your workload may increase. You may get more abuse from unhappy passengers. You may feel more vulnerable and unsafe.

• How will this affect other grades, such as drivers and service control?

  It will be very bad news for them. If a driver has a PEA, or a one-under, or is assaulted, it is vital that there is a Station Supervisor on site to help. If service control need to contact a driver, or find out information or carry out an operational procedure, they need a Station Supervisor on site.

  What if that Supervisor is at another station? Or perhaps out of contact, travelling between stations?! The
  potential consequences are dire.

• How will these plans affect customer service?

  They will reduce it even further. Station staffing was cut to skeleton levels under the 35-hour week; now the company want to take the bones! Worse customer service means more risk of abuse and assault against staff, and even less chance of getting our elusive bonus.

• Why does LUL want to implement such awful plans?

  To save money. To get the most work possible out of you at the least cost to them. To weaken our ability to organise against further attacks.

• Are RMT and TSSA working together about this?

  Yes. RMT and TSSA have jointly registered ‘failures to agree’ about mobile supervision, agency staff and security guards. The two unions have produced joint publicity material against ticket office closures. Both unions will hold industrial action ballots in the new year and will co-ordinate action.

  RMT will work closely with TSSA as much as possible, but will ultimately be told what to do by our own members and will not be held back from the fight that we need.

• Have the unions raised their concerns with LUL? How has management responded?

  Yes. We have been to numerous meetings with senior management about these issues. But they have kept information from us, have not listened to our concerns, and show no intention of backing down.

  Your union will continue to talk with your employer, but we can no longer allow fruitless talks to delay us taking the industrial action we will need to win this battle. Years of experience tell us that management listen to us much more seriously when we strike!