The latest meeting of the Equalities strand of the OSP (job cuts) review, on Tuesday 1 March, revealed that London Underground does not consider the needs of equalities groups when calculating its station staffing levels. RMT secured agreement from LU to consider revising these calculations to include equalities considerations.

RMT has obtained the following statistics showing what proportion of London Underground's passengers are male and female:

• Commuters (59.7%): 59.14 % male / 40.86% female
• Leisure (35.8%): 54.36% male / 45.64% female
• Tourists (04.5%): 56.44% male / 43.56% female
• Total (100%): 57.31% male / 42.69% female

London Underground's plan to cut up to 800 staff adversely affects men and women, workers in all grades, and passengers.

There are some aspects in which women are particularly affected, both as passengers and as workers, which are summarised below.

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For women passengers:

This text is from trade union solicitors OH Parsons, and is the introductory section to its specific guides to the law on discrimination in employment. It sets out the basics of how this legislation works - and its limits! The specific guides will be posted on this website in due course.

This section of the General Secretary's report to RMT's 2009 AGM about women's issues contains some issues particularly pertinent to London Underground station and revenue staff ...

Pregnant Women and Nursing Mothers - Rest Facilities

The lack of suitable rest facilities for pregnant women and nursing mothers was fully aired during the debate at last year's AGM. As a result of the resolution carried, I wrote to all lead officers instructing them to raise the points of the resolution to ensure all companies are complying with their legal obligations under health and safety laws.

There has been a series of rapes of women in the Walthamstow area. On some local station groups, RMT reps have successfully argued that management should provide door-to-door special taxis for women staff to get home.

The union is currently working on extending this to workers in all grades who live or work in this area.

Here is information about RMT's forthcoming conferences for black and ethnic minority members, and for women members.

Compared with some other sections of the rail and transport industry, London Underground's stations and revenue workforce includes a relatively high number of women and is ethnically diverse. It would therefore be good if lots of members from our grades put themselves forward to be delegates.

This resolution was unanimously agreed by RMT's National Women's Advisory Committee on 11 November, having been submitted by Bakerloo and Central Line West branches. It will now go to the union's Executive for their consideration.

This union is appalled at the announcement by Peter Mandelson that the government's plans to extend flexible working rights to parents of all children under 16 have been put on hold due to the economic crisis.

from RMT's regional women's newsletter

London Underground is attacking station staffing in several ways:

• Closing ticket offices.
• Using agency staff.
• Using security guards in place of station supervisors.
• Planning to introduce ‘mobile station supervisors’ who will cover a group of stations during their duty.
• Lone working, which is especially dangerous for detrainment staff.

This is bad news not just for station staff but for other grades too - when drivers or service control staff have an incident, help might not be there.

Now some say I'm a feminist
And I suppose it's true
And though we've come a long long way
There's still much more to do
The fact that I am writing this
Is one thing I regret
And although we are getting there
Well we're not equal yet.

And round the world in so many ways
Women are in chains
And there is still too much loss
And there are too little gains
And there are so many conditions that
Really have not been met
And though I think we're getting there
Well we're not equal yet.

Carol Foster, RMT TfL no.1 branch

At December's women's network meeting, we asked for women's comments on work and other issues below. You might agree with some and disagree with others, but this is what women had to say …

It might surprise you to learn that there are nearly 2,000 women members in RMT’s London Transport region. In December we invited all of them to an event to launch the regional women’s network. The event was a great success, and there has been very positive feedback from the attendees.

We hoped to identify obstacles to women members becoming active, whether they would be interested in being delegates to national conferences, and what their main concerns about work were.