It seems that there won’t be a strike on Boxing Day after all, since I wrote I have been told that the number of TOps volunteering at LES has doubled to 36 leaving just ten shifts to be filled by the unwilling.  HAI and LOU have had a similar response while over on the west end of the line not only have WER and WHC got enough volunteers to fill their Boxing Day rosters but one of them – WER I think – has one volunteer too many.  Apparently the extra bod was asked if they’d like to work a LES duty but they declined.

While I don’t know why we’ve had such an enthusiastic response to Boxing Day working I suspect it could be that as we lost two days wages on strike days and with no pay rise in sight some people are eager to make some extra cash.  On the latest pay offer the reaction has been less than enthusiastic, someone calculated that after the incoming changes to National Insurance the proposed RPI or 1% could mean we’d be taking home less than we are now and when compared to what our colleagues at London Overground are getting (RPI plus 0.5% with 2.25% minimum) it doesn’t seem that good a deal.

Despite what ITN claimed last week a four day week is not part of the deal, management have only offered to discuss the possibility although to be honest I’ve not met anyone who fancied squeezing 36 hours into four days or taking a 20% pay cut.  Along with the four day week the proposal to cap the number of Saturdays and Sundays we work has also been dropped and there’s no mention of whether they still want to expand “Special events” from three to seven.

Management’s claim that they’ll staff Night Tube with part timers seems rather unrealistic.  Back in October one of Boris’s spokespeople said that “the introduction of Night Tube will not be at any cost” but I would have thought that recruiting and training that many part timers would be far more expensive than adding the extra night shifts into the rosters of the existing TOps even when you add in the £200 a shift over the interim period.  The longer this drags on the more people seem to suspect that management are deliberately dragging their heels in the hope that they can abandon the whole idea as unworkable and lay the blame on the unions.

I have been asked to do many things in the twelve years I’ve been a TOp but yesterday was a new one on me.  As I left HOL WB Wood Lane called, asked me to switch into Coded when I got closer to TCR, stop with the cab just in the platform and then see if I could “smell anything untoward”.   As instructed I waited until the train slowed on the approach, knocked out the TBC, pulled into the platform, opened the cab door and had a good sniff.  I suppose I should have asked if I was smelling for smoke, gas, garlic bread or Armani pour Homme but I couldn’t smell anything apart from the usual stench of the Central Line