Workers' Liberty

The unions have stopped industrial action for a document from management which – although it is not nearly so bad as management’s earlier proposals – does dent the principle of 24/7 station supervision. It states that eight of the stations transferred from Silverlink will have supervisors on duty in traffic hours only. Tubeworker has already commented on the need to defend round-the-clock supervision (in the second half of this article), but we want to add some further points.

This is about who controls the station overnight. The infracos would love to take control – to get rid of the pesky supervisors who stop them cutting corners and leaving the station unsafe. We’re having a pop at Infraco bosses here, not their workers. The bosses want nothing more than to cut costs and maximise profits. The workers should be allowed to concentrate on their own work while an LUL station supervisor takes overall care of the station. We are confident that the big majority of engineering workers would rather have an LUL station supervisor in overall charge than their own bosses!

But LUL management would also love to see the Infracos take control of the stations overnight. Not only could it then scrap hundreds of station supervisor jobs, it could also save the money it has to shell out when supervisors send contractors packing because they don’t have the right safety accreditation with them.

Service control staff also have good reason to be nervous about the loss of overnight station supervision. They often need to talk to a station supervisor at night. And if LUL convinces itself that it doesn’t need night-turn supervisors, it could also conclude that night-turn service control staff are a luxury it could dispense with.

Without an engineering-hours station supervisor, station staff could never be quite sure when you book on for duty in the morning that the station is safe. What if worksites (or bales of tarpaulin) have not been tidied up properly? What if rails have been left greasy, causing drivers to SPAD? What if OPO equipment is faulty and stays that way because it is no-one’s job to check it before opening the station? What if doors are left unlocked or equipment in a dangerously accessible place?

You can be sure that having imposed traffic-hours-only supervision at eight stations, LUL management will be scouting around for opportunities to spread it. A few months down the line, they will declare it a ‘great success’ because none of the stations have burned down in the middle of the night and no first trains have derailed with significant loss of life, and the ‘ring-fence’ they say they have put round it will count for nothing.

Defend the principle of 24/7 station supervision!