MATS Newsletter - Every Job Matters

Admin Update
After the ACAS talks we told management to end their workshops with Admin if they wanted the consultation to continue as this undermined the talks and was denying Admin proper consultation with the involvement of their unions, management agreed and the workshops ended.

On Tuesday 25th Feb we met to discuss the new Area Manager role, as part of the presentation the Admin role was brought up. The RMT pointed out that they wanted detailed discussion around the Admin role, management were wanted to start up some kind of workshop but we said we would only be prepared to go into a workshop if we could nominate a number of the admin staff from our membership who would take part in the talks alongside their reps. This is currently not the view of the other unions but we as the RMT would like Admin involvement at an early stage and intend to nominate some RMT Station Admin to take part in the discussions. We don’t want to see a repeat of the OSP and this is a big win to get management to agree your input as part of the talks alongside your reps and we hope that our sister unions will join us in this stance. This will be discussed further in the near future and hopefully start soon. If any Admin are interested contact Roy Carey 07764 650874

Area Manager Update
On Tuesday 25th Feb we met with management to discuss the proposed role of Area Manager Stations and Station Areas. Some unions wanted to get VS offered to GSMs we would rather keep all jobs on the stations, including that of the Admin role. If management want to cut jobs, don’t cut them from the lower grades, hit the senior management roles and save lots of wasted money. As a proposal we made this statement.

RMT Proposals for AMS
As I pointed out on Tuesday you have presented a Case for Change with no substance, all you have done is come up with ideas and generalised. You say, (Slide 4) ‘Our money is not being spent where it delivers real value’, yet in your proposals you are trying to rework the groups and justify a whole grade of management who are superfluous to a modern railway, that grade being Performance Manager. You gave the Victoria line as an example in which the PM currently only has two reports and you then go on to try and justify that job by adding other groups/areas to their remit under the proposed structure.

We propose you remove that grade which will reduce a whole reporting line and saving hundreds of thousands of pounds also allowing GSM’s to report directly to the Line General Manager. We also propose that you don’t increase the groups, which in turn will not have the need for even more GSMs/ AMSs again saving even more money.

Why are the more senior grades in your plans safe yet you are hitting the lower grades that are customer facing. Better customer service is something you are striving to achieve, by cutting customer facing jobs? You really do need to go back to the drawing board.