London Underground Ltd

Dear Gerry

Fit for Future – Stations – Consultation

I am in receipt of your letter of 2nd December 2013 and must state at the outset I am amazed and disappointed at the assertions it contains. To suggest that this union is unwilling to discuss issues such as the loss of jobs and closure of all booking offices is farcical and insulting.

My Regional Organiser, John Leach, met with you yesterday and asked a number of questions, answers to which we believe we are legally entitled in order to cost the proposals. For ease of reference these were as follows:-

Attached is a presentation on tube bosses devastating cuts plan.

RMT is fighting back against these plans which would see nearly a thousand jobs cut and every ticket office closed.

Following a ballot for strike action which resulted in an overwhelming 88% vote in favour in a dispute over the systematic abuse of drivers and the unilateral ripping up of negotiated agreements, all RMT Train Operators and Instructor Operators on the Piccadilly Line are instructed to not book on for any turns of duty that commence between: -

12:00 hours on Wednesday 4th December 2013 and 11:59 hours on Thursday 5th December 2013.

We note the circular from LUL management seeking volunteers to work as ‘TfL Ambassadors’, previously known as ICSAs. We continue to have serious concerns about how TfL and LUL attempt to deploy these staff, in ways which breach the settlement of our 2008 Casualisation dispute and undermine safe operating practices and the jobs of station staff.

We therefore instruct the General Secretary to remind London Underground members of our ongoing industrial action short of strikes on this matter, contained in our decision Gww 19 July 2012 and amended by our decision Gww 15 August 2012.

The poster can be downloaded below

The Decimation of Our Jobs (if we allow LU to get their way)

Fact - Total cuts package by 2021 will be £4.2 billion.
Fact – CSAs, SAMFs, SCRAs & SSs will all be affected.
Fact – We will all need to re-apply for our jobs.
Fact - Station cuts will only save £270 million.
Fact - £270m is just 6% of the total above.
Fact – After station cuts there’s still £3.9 billion to save.
Fact – The remaining 94% will come from your job too.

The RMT have recieved a new document which reveals more details of London Undergrounds cuts plan. This newly released document, attached below, is a 'Change Assurance Plan' which gives some further insight into what these cuts, if successful, could mean in health & safety terms .

The document is very low on detail of how the proposed changes to station staffing structure will impact on the driver grade. However, section 2.7 claims that there are no changes proposed to train operations.

As the Evening Standard heralded all-night running of the Tube in London, hidden in the small print were details of the most savage attacks on the jobs and conditions of staff, and on the service to passengers.

We believe that rather than cut staff, London Underground and its parent company Transport for London should:

1. challenge the government's funding cut to TfL, and demand the guaranteed, decent level of public funding that such a crucial transport system requires
2. maintain or increase the level of station staffing and ticket office opening times; promote its own ticket-selling services rather than those of external outlets
3. undertake a major programme of making London Underground more accessible to disabled people and to communities that it does not currently serve
   

• Union willing to discuss any proposals to extend services.
• TfL press statement untrue

We note and adopt the report of our Southern Sub-Committee.

Further, we note the press statement by Transport for London dated 26 November, stating that our industrial action ballot is ‘in response to plans unveiled last week to run parts of the Tube for 24 hours at weekends during 2015, and to make staff more visible at stations’.