The TUC has produced a useful guide to issues surrounding menopause. If you are going through 'the change', or if you are an RMT rep, you will find it useful to download and read this document to check your rights and what allowances management should be making for you.
To download it, click on the file name below.
The highest-paid director’s earnings:
TfL’s Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy’s salary: £320,000 + up to 50% bonus (2006)
Tube Lines: 15 Directors, average salary £660,000+ (2007)
by Steve Hedley, RMT London Transport Regional Council Secretary
Talks start soon about your next pay rise. You deserve a decent rise, and your union, RMT, is determined to fight for that.
You need 20% more money to fill up. The staples of life - bread, rice, milk, other food - are rocketing in price. According to the Daily Telegraph, food prices are accelerating at their fastest rate since records began, increasing the average family’s annual shopping bill by £750.
by Steve Hedley, RMT Regional Council Secretary
An all-grades, all-companies ballot is essential if we want to stop sackings, harassment, victimisation and bullying. The very future of the union is at stake.
It doesn’t matter if you are a driver, station staff, controller, cleaner or engineer, you will know someone who has been harassed back to work when sick, been sacked for attendance or suspended for carrying out union activities.
by Kebba Jobe, RMT health & safety rep, LUL service control
In February, Jo Duffy was re-elected RMT representative, but his local Service Control Manager refused to recognise his position, despite the fact that a local rep had been negotiated for Jubilee line service control eight years previously and they had recognised me when I was the rep for five of those years!
by Bill O’Dowd, Trains Council
LUL management can’t get a new Attendance At Work policy, so say they will ‘enforce the existing one’. This means there will be no more ‘not normally counted items’ such as medical treatments at hospital, unless it is an emergency admittance!
by Rick Grogan, RMT rep, East Ham group
On East Ham group there is an ongoing dispute due to management’s disregard of proper procedure and the bullying and unfair sacking of staff.
A meeting with management made things worse, with management now saying you are not entitled to a union rep until you have been off sick for 28 days.
This opens the door to widespread abuse and bullying of staff. We have been struggling for over a year to get management to accept our agreements and now they have shown their contempt and torn up our right to representation when off sick.
by Janine Booth, Stations & Revenue Council
As well as the Attendance Clampdown and unfair sackings (reported elsewhere in this newsletter),
LUL management are attacking station and revenue staff’s rights in several other ways: • threatening to forcibly displace staff away from the station they enjoy working at; • misusing the new Special Requirements Team (SRT) to cover for under-staffing of stations; • reorganising Revenue Control and making RCIs feel insecure about their jobs;
by an RMT rep
Our Department Director has informed us of sweeping job cuts. It seems that management are bulldozing these cuts through. Rumours from worried senior managers are claiming that around 2,500 jobs are to be axed on TfL.
After giving us a slide show about ‘proposed’ changes, they then handed every member of staff a letter telling them whether their position had been ceased or not, and whether you would have to reapply for your own job.
by Becky Crocker, Cleaners’ Co-ordinator, RMT Camden 3 branch
When cleaners took strike action, the cleaning companies victimised key activists.
Stonebridge Park RMT rep, Godday, organised a 100% solid strike at his depot. The day after, he was suspended without pay, removing this inspiring and effective rep from his workplace. Godday has been out of work since early July.