Saturday 1 August 2015


10 months after LU announced Night Tube, 6 months after negotiations started, 23 days after the biggest strike on the Tube since 2002 and just 5 days before the next one LU management have presented us with its second “full and final offer”.  Or is it third?  I think the record was four “final” offers, someone should really buy a dictionary at 55 so they can look up the definition of the word “final”.

The pay offer is a 2% rise but confusingly that is made up of 1% pay rise and a £500 consolidated (i.e. counting towards our pensions) increase for running a 24 hour service.  In fact this actually means that some grades get less than 2% (Service Managers and Power Control Room Operators 1.7%) while others get more (CSA 2.7% and Technical Grade 1 3.3%).  Why not just a 2% rise?  For the next two years management are offering RPI or 1% whichever is greater which is less than we’d hoped for so room for improvement on that.

For Night Tube all grades working on lines and stations affected are offered a £500 non-consolidated bonus (not counting towards our pensions) which means that TOps at depots not working Night Tube will get it.  That in turn begs the question why not spread the shifts over all the depots that are touched by Night Tube, as it currently stands only WHC and LES will be working them on the Central Line while LOU and HAI get the bonus plus WER get the bonus without even being included on the route.

The good news is that TOps will get an extra £200 per Night Tube shift which is a step in the right direction but still does nothing to help ease the body-clock nightmare of working three lates, two nights, finishing early on Sunday morning, having the rest of Sunday as a Rest Day and back to work on Monday.  This payment will only apply during the “Transition Period” which will start when Night Tube is introduced and end with the introduction of a new timetable with either part-time TOps doing the night shifts or “fixed links” which I believe means separate rosters for TOps working Night Tube and those that don’t.

The plain fact is that few of us believe that there will ever be part time nights or fixed links and we will be stuck with these shifts for the rest of our working lives.  If management had any intention of introducing either of those then why did they not start recruiting at the end of last year when there would have been time to get them trained up for the start of Night Tube?  They’ve recruited part time CSAs to cover stations over night, they could just have easily done so with TOps.  Instead we’ve have been sent an extra 137 TOps across the five lines affected, just enough to expand the roster to cover Night Tube and if we were to get more TOps for part time nights or fixed links then we’ll be overstaffed.

And then tucked away at the end of the announcement, a little nugget that has the alarm bells well and truly ringing.  Under the current agreement LU are allowed three “Special Events” per year, we run trains overnight, the shifts are voluntary and at double pay.  Usually this only happens once at New Year’s Eve although we did run overnight for the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012 but part of the pay offer is an increase to seven Special Events per year.    Now if we only ever run overnight one day a year and we’ve already got three why on earth would management want seven?  Say hello to overnight running every Sunday on a bank holiday weekend and maybe even Christmas Eve with staff staggering home around 7am Christmas morning.  Ho, ho, ho, management’s gift to staff came early and it’s bloody socks again.

Even though these Special Events are supposedly voluntary we know that if there aren’t enough volunteers then staff with the least amount of time in the grade are required to work.  After all the kerfuffle between 2010 and 2012 it was agreed that the Boxing Day service would be voluntary with anything up to a Sunday service and in 2013 we had about a quarter of TOps working, almost all volunteers.  Last year management pushed it to the limit, running what was effectively a Sunday service minus one, unsurprisingly there was nowhere near enough volunteers and despite being in the grade for 12 years I found myself on a train Boxing Day rather than watching West Ham’s traditional annual humiliation on TV with the solace of Brodie’s London Fields Pale Ale.

All this comes with vague promises to consult with the unions over our “work/life balance” after we've agreed to sign a blank cheque but this is still “jam tomorrow” and from previous experience we know that with LU its usually a case of “jam permanently postponed”.  LU can’t seem to get their heads around the concept that no matter how much money they offer us it doesn’t address our key concerns about the terms and conditions we are being asked to accept, that the whole introduction of Night Tube has been poorly planned and that if they wanted this to start in September they should have started negotiations before they announced it last year.


The offer will be rejected and with good reason, expect another strike next week.  On a lighter note a couple of Saturdays ago while waiting for the signal to clear at ROV on the inner I saw a squirrel balancing on top of the cable run lift its front leg and scratch it’s armpit with its back leg.  That was the highlight of my shift, driving a train can be very boring…….

25 comments:

  1. Again divide and rule is showing it's ugly head again. CSA's among other staff will be expected to cover nights as well on cover weeks (sickness and A/L) and will suffer from working nights but no £200 offer for them. I hope all unions reject this offer again and we continue to fight this.

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  2. Are L.U. now if they don't get an agreement going to impose the new rosters and tell the Unions to do your worst.

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  3. Basically LU want all station staff to be interchangable, everyone can work at pretty much any grade anywhere that the manager deems it's needed. They couldn't give a stuff how staff get into work, how they get home or wherever they actually get any sleep between shifts.

    There's a new video on the FftF website where they talk about how all the staff are "fired up" and ready for the changes. Seriously they are living in a bloody fantasy world. You can also work as a higher grade but they only pay you for the higher grade if you do three higher grade shifts in a row? Heaven forbid you actually get paid the same as someone doing the same job. All the Ipads in the world are not going to make me think that's fair

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    1. that's just not true though.

      On the part-timers point, the reps blocked that solution for train ops although i expect management wish now they'd just gone ahead and recruited anyway. Don't forget there are already part-timers on stations but you can only become a part time train op from a full time position. The quick uptake of the stations jobs shows recruitment would be possible, although obviously training etc takes time. It's the obvious solution but I guess some people might think it opens the door to the dreaded 'flexibility' of working hours for everyone.

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    2. Rubbish. If management had any intention of fixed links or part timers then they'd have started negotiations over Night Tube well in advance of the start date not waited until it was too late to do either. Management have lied in the past and they are lying now.

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  4. As a CSA training right now to be a new driver there is a lot to be said of the lack of coherent sufficient training we receive.

    The company hired us guys with assessments (Major issues with the outsourced Capita team's terrible administration and procedure in assessing us all for promotion), since January, with the expectation of us doing nights but in no way mentioned part time working-or that we'd be doing nights!.

    They could have, and many part timers on stations who have now been accepted as T.Ops, would have loved to have stepped up and continue working part time if night tube was recruited for.

    It's the company that have been all over the place. Had they addressed all these rostering issues with station and T.Op staff earlier on, the unions could have negotiated.

    P.Hufton came and went as COO
    http://giphy.com/gifs/11gC4odpiRKuha/html5

    Nick Brown came and then gave way to Steve Grffiths.
    The negotiating Team are new.
    Boris is being laughed at by his leadership rivals in Osbourne and May, but has his seat in Uxbridge.

    -

    This offer is essentially bribing T.Ops to be TFL's bitches and making Aslef withdraw from the dispute, leaving RMT and TSSA to deal with. Sort out the drivers and the rest will fall.

    "ooh, here you go, here's some money only for one year (Or "Interim" period).Now jump boy, whenever I ask you; there's a good train op!- Welcome to no life balance for the next 20 years"

    They fail to understand that not everyone in society and the private workforce they may have dealt with in the past, have internalised Thatcther's dream of the s̶e̶l̶f̶i̶s̶h̶ free individual worker.

    Would Steve Griffiths and Senior management, who are employed by TFL-LU just like us, react any differently to us if they were told
    "Right, Put down the golf clubs, you gotta work nights now Steve, Nick and Mike"

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    1. Good for you, great post.
      Bottom line on this should surely be 'Big Mouth Boris' opened IT almost a year ago, & LU have taken all this time to decide if would agree & implement Night Tube, or disagree & say couldn't. They've waited to see how GE went, how politics in London panned out.
      That didn't quite go their way, so thought "Well we better just say we want Night Tube" while crossing fingers & thinking 'we haven't a fucking clue how to do this'. Some new Management knobs came along & said 'we'll just tell the staff they have to do this, and they will'.
      I didn't know Capita now doing stuff for LUL - does that explain the poor quality of Senior Management now? And regarding your poor/poorer training-that is something we must all keep an eye on.
      Re divide & rule - don't worry. ASLEF drivers totally not interested in temporary 'buy-off'. All want better for all, guaranteed, long-term.

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  5. This afternoon an update was emailed to all staff that "the new offer has been rejected outright by the union leadership - again without consulting their members"
    I take it no one in 55 is able to use Facebook and check the comments on Finn's post.
    With every day, every press release, Mr Griffiths is showing just how far out of his depth he is.

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    1. He also said that 70% of staff are happy with their new location. This is based on the fact that only 30% appealed. This ignores the glaring fact that loads of staff didnt want to move but didn't appeal because the only other options were even worse. I'm going from being rostered at one station to working over about 15 stations with all the increased travel time that comes with it.

      and that's before we get to the Uniform that makes me look like a circus clown

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    2. Exactly...a play with words. I would estimate about 99% of staff are peed off with what the future appears to hold. The company has lost the plot it seems.

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    3. Exactly-maybe Mr Griffiths et al DON'T get to see these posts (and if they are private quite right he should not-and we certainly don't want spying/using for Blacklisting as in past, probably still going on), but have to be seriously thick/out of loop to not know that 90% + totally against LU on this, will happily keep striking (losing money) until FAIR outcome NEGOTIATED.

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  6. roll on the technological singularity

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    1. In the words of the virgin mary.................come again

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    2. Yes...? If was a reference to 'Driverless trains' dream on - 20-50 years I reckon on existing infrastruture!

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    3. RATP (Parisian TfL) took 8 years to fully convert Line 1 (oldest and busiest on the network) to unattended operation (i.e. no drivers, agents or whatever staff on board trains). Believe it or not there was not a single strike because of this project - and this is France we're talking about!

      Conversion of the next line (Line 4) has just begun, apparently.

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    4. I read somewhere that it was four years negotiating the deal with the unions and then four years converting the line. I'd not heard about Line 4, I had heard that they were connecting 3bis and 7bis to form Line 15 and that would be driverless.

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    5. That's my point though. They started with talks, there were no deadlines for implementation, and they kept negotiating until they arrived at a solution that satisfied both sides. And managed to implement such a huge project without any industrial action at all.

      Over here, TfL have managed to cause two strikes (and counting) over a much less significant issue. And when it comes to the so-called 'militancy' of the unions, let's just say picket lines in France do not consist of a few blokes waving flags in front of stations and chanting slogans...

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  7. It's actually 21 months since they first announced night tube (to divert attention from job cuts on stations). Come September 12th, whatever happens, they will have had the best part of two years to get this sorted.

    http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/21/tubes-run-all-night-weekends-london-underground

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    1. Wow. my life is slipping away faster than I realised......

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  8. Has anyone else noticed how Jeremy Corbyn looks a bit like the Rik Mayal character, Lord Flasheart from Blackadder? No? Is that just me? lol. In any case today is Strike Day 2!! Lets give all those Tory Thatcher wannabes their "Miners Strike" wet dream. Lets do-ooh-ooh IT!!!!

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    1. Obi Wan Corbyn; the force is strong in him.....

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    2. Indeed. Closely we should keep eyes on him. mmmm. Closely indeed. Fears that he does not stray to the Dark side. lol

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  9. You should write a letter to the Daily Mail telling them what this is really about. You could dispel some of the myths:

    - That drivers are not recruited regularly (they are, but they come up through other grades)

    - That the job is unskilled (it's skilled enough that crew cannot be replaced in short time)

    - That automation is not here yet and that even that requires train captains

    - That 50k is not a lot in London and is not a mortgageable wage in most parts (a small terrace in Watford costs 8x that salary)

    - That doctors on 20k a year is a scandal in its own right and nothing to do with TOps (over their career they end up on a lot more anyway)

    - That general wages are rubbish because the government keeps subsidising cheap labour with top-ups - the real scandal is not that drivers are paid too much but that the general population is paid so little.

    - That bus drivers are paid what they because they only take two weeks to train up... and that their wages (and new doctors') are a clear indication of how government and employers like to treat people if they can get away with it.

    Speak out, you must. As the press and public have great misconceptions.

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    1. The Daily Mail etc. aren't interested in anything we have to say, we are the enemy as far as they are concerned and therefore must be vilified.

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    2. I work on the buses and I completely agree with you. As we know, privvytisation was also a way of splitting up unions and as such the representation and bargaining on the bus side of things has been next to near existent for nearly 20 years. This is now being addressed with the RMT organising in a few operating companies (mine included) but surprisingly aren't yet recognised as the majority is with Unite (allegedly in the pocket of some of the operators, hence the move towards RMT). And like you say, bus wages are a combination of lack of union movement, complacency among staff (moaning but not organising) and the simple fact that TfL and the operators are trying to get blood out of a stone. Many contracts had better terms and conditions 15 years ago than now, this has been eaten away through companies undercutting each other, reducing costing's for contracts so they will win more tenders from TfL, something Red Ken wanted to end, as well as re-introducing free tube travel on staff passes. Now the "competitive" pay structure is starting to affect bus operators with some holding recruitment drives abroad to try and fill the void. With new drivers now earning as little as £9.50 an hour its little surprise no one wants all the aggro of driving a 12 tonne heap through central London for up to 10 hours a day.

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