Thursday 30 January 2014



I’ve been doing a bit more digging around on the strike and I can confirm that RMT has asked Control Room staff to stop working at 9pm next Tuesday along with the station staff.  If TSSA issue the same call then even if the ASLEF TOps come into work we might not be able to go anywhere as there might not be enough staff at Wood Lane or any of the other control centres.


Another twist is that RMT have told its members to refuse to familiarise any of the office staff that LUL are hoping will fill the gaps on stations, according to RMT this is permissible while the union is officially in dispute with LUL so it won’t breech anyone’s terms of employment.  In order to comply with the minimum staffing levels at Section 12 stations a certain number of staff have to be familiarised and if they don’t have enough the station cannot legally be opened.  Unless things have changed since I was on stations familiarisation is done by the Super or if they weren’t available a DSM but as those grades are facing the biggest losses I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to say “no” to training LUL's strike breakers.


A couple of days ago I was talking to a Northern Line TOp who mentioned the case of a Station Supervisor who has been rostered at a station for many years, has come to know quite few of the regular passengers and spends a lot of time on the gateline being customer service orientated, just the sort of thing LUL say they want staff to be. Currently it seems that he has no idea if he'll be at that station in future or even if he'll even be a Supervisor, one of his biggest worries being that after three years of protected pay he'll be facing a substantial pay cut.


It could be that his fears are groundless, that LUL will take into account his years of experience and the good customer relations he's built up while he's been there but until management can offer the staff some assurances its not hard to understand why this has created an atmosphere of confusion and anxiety.  That being said any assurances management make are unlikely to do much to assuage fears, the results of LUL's own survey a few years ago revealed that a majority of staff feel that management are not being entirely truthful with them.

11 comments:

  1. I believe this is the view of the station staff in general, lots of Supervisors are accepting of change, willing to get out of their office and are quite proactive in terms of customer service. However they currently haven't got a clue what situation they will be in after the changes. What role they will be? Don't know. What location you will be? No idea How much will you earn? Possibly a bit more or quite a bit less. Will many years of hard work be taken into account in deciding my new job or will it be decided by someone who's never met me on the basis of a ten minute role play?

    The answer to all these questions is still basically "subject to consultation" but that's not much use to staff with kids to be picked up, rent to pay and so on. In addition some staff have waited years for positions that will no longer exist post 2015? If they had been made aware of this they might have gone for other roles Train Op most notably

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  2. I confess to have been very unsure about this strike and what it was all about until now.

    However, this post does shed some light on the worries that the staff have, and they are understandable worries at that. Where I work has just undergone a similar type of restructure, although we're not safety critical.

    I now understand the station staff's concerns, that are becoming more real, and its thanks to blogs like this that are written in plain language that anybody can understand.

    However, I'm still unsure particularly what Bob Crow's agenda is? I hate to sound like I'm picking on him (and by inference the RMT), but it seems to me that he is always the first to cause the travelling public anxiety and trouble and the last to ever accept solutions that have been accepted by everybody else, so I don't have a lot of time for him, although I respect his members right to withdraw their labout.

    I'm seriously hoping that this will all be resolved by negotiations, as I'm sure are the staff, but in the end it is down to them how many days pay they are willing to lose to this issue.

    One thing? What is the difference between a Section 12 station and say my local station at Chigwell, also on the good old Central Line which seems to be unstaffed anyway

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    1. A Section 12 station has a minimum staffing level or it's not allowed to open (legally anyways) wheres other stations can be left unstaffed if needed. In real world terms Section 12 stations are more complicated generally with lifts, escalators, complicated track sections and quite deep underground whereas stations in the outer reaches like dear old Chigwell are quite simple in comparison with just gates and platforms, (again this is a generalisation)

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    2. "Section 12" is any station that is subject to the Fire Precautions (Sub-Surface Railway Stations) Regulations of 2009 which replaced the 1989 Regs introduced after the King's Cross Fire. Basically any station that is wholly or partial underground, whether that be deep level or cut and cover.

      Bob Crow's agenda is simple, keep the RMT members happy by trying to get them the best deal possible so they re-elect him every 4 or 5 years (I forget which) and try to expand the membership. So far his tactics have been an utter success, he was re-elected for a second term as General Secretary and he's expanded the membership from just over 50k to around 80k.

      As to the RMT causing the travelling public trouble I can't think of a single case where the conflict has not been started by LUL with the unions reacting to defend their members' interests.

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    3. "Workers Liberty" (so obviously not a Right-of-Centre source) claim that LU are now briefing Train Operating Managers on "Fit for Future - Trains".

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    4. Yeah, we've all heard that, its not much of a secret.

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  3. As originally proposed the "substantial pay cut" is immediate, you move to your new salary straight away and LU "top up" the difference at the end of each financial year (LU have now said they are looking at altering this). But after 3 years that's it. And either way you retire on your last rate of pay (final salary pension), whereas a career-defined pension would actually be more beneficial in this case. And we're also told LU have made no decisions yet on annual leave and banked rest days, which tells you alol you need to know.

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  4. There's no news yet on any of the pay scales? I know that they will look at the duties of a CSA2 and grade them accordingly, and then at CSA1 and grade them... but what about the fact that SAMF used to get an enhancement for money handling and the appropriate training for that? Who will handle the machine cash in their plan? Will their pay be enhanced? Will they farm the cash collection out to a subcontractor and do the tally up centrally? They can't pay supervisors to count cash - if cash is out, you can't leave your post for anything short of an evacuation. So will they pay all CSA2 for cash handling? Pay them accordingly? Or will they have high grade working?

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    1. CSA1 will be on the present £29000, CSA2 will be on £23000,

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    2. Thanks. Are those on a point scale or fixed? How does that compare with SAMF and high grade working?

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    3. SAMF & SCRAS are on £35000, when these proposals come in pay will be protected for 3 years xo no pay rise and at the end of the three years SAMF & SCRAS will revert to the CSA1 pay scale.

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