Following hours and hours of talks at ACAS a new offer has been received from the company. This has been placed before the General Grades Committee and has been referred to the union’s Southern sub-Committee for consideration.

In the meantime the ballot goes ahead. The pay offer still stands at a 1.5% increase from 1st April 2009 for year one and RPI + 0.5% or 0.5% whichever is the greater for year two. If you believe you deserve more than this then you should vote YES for both strike action and industrial action short of a strike on your ballot paper.

LUL have had ample opportunity to get things right this year. Instead, they have tried to be divisive and been more intent in trying to make jobs cuts. Well, we have stopped them doing that, but they still want to hold down pay.

To make matters worse they have tried to split the workforce by extending an improvement to the medical redeployment system that only benefited the first 25 Train Operators who require it in any one year.

The improvement is the guarantee of a job offer in the event of a need for medical redeployment which is a good thing. At the time that the Union’s decision to ballot was taken, no other grade or any other train driver after the 25th claimant stood to benefit from this. It now remains to be seen whether members will find the latest offer from the company acceptable.

Message from Bob Crow, General Secretary