From the notices that went up yesterday it seems that management have conceded on almost every issue ASLEF raised so In future they will abide by the agreed procedures on sickness, days off and TOp errors that apply to the whole of the Tube rather than making up the rules for the Central Line themselves.  Any cases that weren’t dealt with by the proper procedures will be reviewed, the “prompt dispatch” experiment will be terminated and our refresher training will stay at five days rather than being cut to four.


We will also be getting more TOps although there’s no mention of trying to reduce the amount of unwanted overtime caused by late running which is rather strange when you consider the emphasis they’ve been putting on saving money recently.  I guess the inconvenience to passengers of having trains break down while in service and the subsequent delays isn’t as important as claiming that we’re running more trains than ever.


One interesting item at the end of the notice that caught my eye was “ASLEF have agreed a number of meetings at director level to police this agreement”.  To me that suggests if we find ourselves in disagreement we can go straight to the top which could be seen as an admission that Central Line management provoked an unnecessary strike by their dictatorial attitude and senior managers are keen to avoid any repetition.

Another view going around the mess rooms is that this was a test to see what would happen if management tried to be “flexible” with our agreements and the Central Line was a guinea pig for the rest of the Tube.  If that was the case then management have discovered this guinea pig has got bloody sharp teeth and they might need a tetanus shot.