Health and safety

RMT General Grades Committee decision on DISI:

That we note and accept the report from our lead officer for London Underground. Accordingly, we instruct the General Secretary to issue as soon as possible a circular with the following wording:

RMT is completely opposed to section 2.2 of version 3 of the D.I.S.I. that states “Generally the train operator will be the most appropriate person to assess the defect. However in some cases the controller may decide to arrange for somebody else to attend the train and carry out the assessment.”

Val Barzey of RMT's LU Engineering branch reports on the RMT Health & Safety Advisory Conference held on 16 February:

Greg Hewitt – Chair

Greg commented that the HSE is more an Advisory body than Regulators. The aim of the government is to lift the burden of Employment laws. They intend to reduce the no. of regulations, attacking workers rights. H & S inspections have been cut across the board, inadequately enforcing the law and there has been a reduction in enforcement notices. There were 69% reduction in full inspections and 48% reduction in prosecutions.

There were 2 reviews carried out last year, Vince Cable reducing regulations and the Lord Young Review of the operation of H & S laws and the growth of the compensation culture – Common Sense Common Safety.

TUBE UNION RMT warned of more tube chaos for passengers as it emerged that as part of the TfL cuts programme the frequency of safety-critical inspections is being slashed from twice a week to once a week.

In a safety licensing concession requested by LU the twice weekly inspection of track and infrastructure in sidings and depots will be cutback to just once a week. These inspections are in the areas of highest traffic anywhere on the network with fleet constantly being shunted in and out.

RMT General Grades Committee decision ...

That we note the absence of a reply from London Underground on this matter. We instruct the General Secretary to urgently contact the company demanding a reply.

We also seek the views of the relevant branch, Stratford no.1, on how this matter should be pursued, and instruct the General Secretary to place this matter back in front of the GGC once those views have been received.

HOW LONG TIL SOMEONE DIES? That's the question we're asking now that management have ignored our safety concerns over the sensitive edge technology used on the new 09 stock. For more details, please download a copy of this leaflet by clicking on the attachment below.

TUBE UNION RMT today repeated its call for a halt to the TfL jobs cuts programme after a leaked internal London Underground document, passed to the union, confirmed that the management claim that they have no plans for unstaffed stations as a result of the cuts is a total lie.

“There are a number of stations across the network which is [sic] left unstaffed from time to time. Where this is the case without LLPA there is no audible means of providing service disruption information to customers on platforms. With the OSP [station staff job cuts programme] and future station staffing changes it may become more of an issue at more locations more frequently.”

IN A NEW analysis of the London Underground station job cuts plans RMT has revealed that major terrorist targets are right in the front line of the proposed reductions in staffing numbers.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said: “At a time of heightened terrorist alert it is gross negligence on the part of LUL to be hacking back the numbers of station based staff at key targets like Canary Wharf, Parliament and the Bank of England."

RMT reps have been back at ACAS over the last couple of days, following on from Wednesday's solid strike. ACAS continues to host a review of London Underground's job-cutting plans.

Now, health and safety reps are working on specific scenarios comparing how safety standards would be maintained comparing current staffing levels with the proposed, lower levels. Meanwhile, stations reps have compiled a report that shows that LU figures used to justify ticket office cuts are inaccurate and that therefore the numbers should be revised.

The review will continue on Tuesday.