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Camden 3 is the RMT Branch representing Goodge Street, Camden, Edgware, Finchley Central station groups; East Finchley, Golders Green depots; Coburg Street and CBSO

Next Branch Meeting: 17:00 Wednesday, 10th February at The Exmouth Arms, Starcross Street near Euston Station.

Next Regional Council: 16:30 Thursday, 28th January at the Somerstown Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street

Battle lines are drawn! Our members are justifiably annoyed at the paltry pay award. We were awarded only 1.5%, and at the same time TfL have increased fares in the Capital by record amounts. Some fares, which affect the poorest sections of society, have gone up by 20% whilst tube Oyster fares in central London have gone up by 12%. Overall bus fares have risen by 12.7% and tube fares by 3.9%. This is justified by the Mayor with the argument that the £3.2 billion budget deficit has to be plugged. Our bosses will look for further savings by attempting to cut services and to cut jobs. Leaked proposals indicate that up to 144 ticket offices will be closed and up to 1200 jobs will be axed. Already scores of jobs around the combine are left vacant, with no intention by management to fill them. Already many outlying stations are regularly left unstaffed, which is a health and safety risk for the travelling public. The public are faced with the costliest transport system in Europe, which if management get their way will be seriously understaffed. Our members are faced with a major battle to defend jobs and services. Our members showed last year that we were willing to take action to defend jobs and we won that battle, despite the efforts of the TSSA and Aslef leadership to undermine our strike. Many rank and file members of both unions respected our strike and picket lines. We need to prepare to take action again to defend every single job. The money is there to provide a well staffed, cheap and world class tube service for the Capital. The Government found £100 billion for the Banks in 2009 alone. TfL is in financial crisis because of the vast sums of money wasted on PPP. We will not allow management to dismantle our promotion structures, job security, pensions or safe working conditions. UNITY IS STRENGTH

"up to 144 ticket offices will be closed and up to 1200 jobs will be axed"

Management impose £5 minimum top–up A £5 minimum top-up has been imposed across the network following a ‘successful’ trial at a limited number of central London stations. This initiative has been forced on staff and passengers, but of course LU are saying that it is to reduce queues and ‘improve’ service. Well, if you remove the ability to purchase what you want from a ticket office, it simply leaves passengers no option but to go elsewhere. It is plain to see that this is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to drive customers away from the ticket office. All this will lead to anger and frustration from passengers unable to add less than a fiver on to their oyster. Potentially leading to assaults, longer queues at ticket machines and ultimately ticket office closures and job cuts. We need to fight against ridiculous initiatives such as this. If you are assaulted get it logged and an EIRF completed. Inform your DSM. We need to campaign to keep our ticket offices open, and let us not forget that before he was elected Boris Johnson signed a petition to keep ticket offices open, but there is no sign that he intends to honour that particular publicity stunt.

Join RMT contact your local Rep, ring 0800 376 3706 or join online at www.rmt.org.uk/join

Cleaners! Camden 3 is your local RMT branch if you work on the north of the Northern Line, in a station, depot or at Coburg Street. You can contact the RMT rep in your area or any number on this newsletter if you have a problem at work. We know ISS continues to mistreat and victimise its cleaners. At Morden depot, ISS used unsafe chemicals that made cleaners bleed through the nose! They regularly deny the right to take booked annual leave, or don’t issue full uniform. For your safety or rights at work you need a union to help you stand up for yourself. PAY: ISS failed to pay the £7.45 London Living Wage it promised in April. With Tubelines’ likely collapse this year, we can renew the fight for the living wage and for cleaners to be brought back in house. If you’re not already a member, join the RMT

High Barnet gateline shambles At the last level 1 meeting the shambles surrounding the High Barnet gateline was once again raised by RMT. Following an earlier meeting with representatives of the Supervisors at High Barnet, proposals were drawn up by local management which have been submitted to Duty Schedules for consideration. It would seem that these proposals incorporate the possibility that their will be no further need for the second window to remain open, such has been the numbers using the new gateline. This would release the Supervisor for other duties, like manning the gateline! Your representative cynically observed that it would be highly likely that Duty Schedules will agree any proposals put forward, such has been the clamour from senior management for the gateline to be fully manned at all times! Management then further stated that another meeting will be arranged with the High Barnet Supervisors to try and reach agreement over any finalised proposals. The RMT position remains that we will fully support the Supervisors in whatever course of action they decide to take and will refer the whole matter up through the machinery if necessary. RMT further pointed out that they would have done this earlier, if it had not been for the need to ensure that every viable local option had been considered and exhausted. It was further noted that the local Health and Safety Representative would also refer the matter up through their Machinery, especially given the adverse Safety Council report that has already been drawn up and circulated.

Babysitting stations and allocation of overtime A recent email was circulated to all supervisors by a member of staff on Acton Town reserve highlighting the issue of CSAs or CSA(MF)s babysitting stations in light of the being no supervisor to cover. This is more that a local issue as it is happening on other groups, including mine. Now obviously, ALL of these separate managers could not ALL have had the same idea ALL at the same time (they’re not THAT clever). So, it must have been discussed and agreed at a higher level as a strategy to reduce spending costs and then cascaded down to group level to be interpreted by local management, right? However, the interpretation of this has now gone to the extreme. I know that station supervisors are regularly being refused overtime to cover some of the uncovered duties because overtime budgets are being cut, but at what point is it acceptable for a DSM to authorise a CSA to be alone on a station, in possession of the station/ticket office keys, inside the ticket office with contractors on the station? This is clearly unacceptable, and a clear breach of rules and procedures on many levels which, if a supervisor where to be caught doing would probably lead to disciplinary action. This practice has to stop immediately but it is not going to happen without the collective forces of the unions working together to beat it.

FAQs

Babysitting Babysitting can only be used to cover un-anticipated absence, i.e., the first duty following a supervisor calling in sick, etc. If asked to babysit you should not carry out any activity for which you do not hold a license, in particular you should not do any of the following: Managing any staff Managing incidents, apart from evacuating the station in an emergency Opening and closing a station Signing in any contractors For a complete list see Rule Book 11, section 8

Overtime Allocation Overtime must be allocated according to the following agreement: rostered in the grade at the location, reserve in the grade, rostered in the grade at another location, anyone holding the relevant license If you indicated that you would be prepared to cover a shift but were passed over for someone with a lesser claim according to the precedence set out above, then you may have a case for claiming the shift.

Platform Duties The maximum continuous length of any platform duty is two hours at which point you must be given a break, although this could be gateline duties, etc. Want the answer to a question, email camden3@rmt.org.uk and get the facts

SYNERGY: ‘the interaction or cooperation of two or more organisations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects’

UNitY IS STRENGTH

Got something to say?Contact the editor at camden3@rmt.org.uk Join RMT contact your local Rep, ring 0800 376 3706 or join online at www.rmt.org.uk/join