1,400 TfL jobs under threat

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

Transport for London has announced a plan to cut 1,400 jobs as part of its "transformation" programme, a bid to save up to £5 billion as the Tories' slash TfL's central government subsidy. These jobs will come from engineering, admin, managerial, and other departments.

Tubeworker would have no problem saying goodbye to some bosses at the top: there is undoubtedly a culture within TfL/LU whereby hordes of managers and consultants are employed on inflated salaries. But it is not only senior managers but vital staff in administrative, engineering, and planning roles who face the axe.

Unions must resist this cuts onslaught. Any job lost will be a setback, as it accepts the principle that cutting staff - whatever their grade or department - is the first option for making "savings" rather than, for example, trimming senior management pay, or actually fighting the government on the question of the subsidy.

A genuinely radical Labour administration in City Hall would not be taking the cuts lying down. It would be telling the Tories that it does not accept the reduction in the subsidy, and publicly declaring that it will support any and all union action against the cuts. In the past, radical Labour councils such as Poplar in the 1920s and Clay Cross in the 1970s have taken on Tory governments by refusing to pass on central government cuts to local people by cutting services or increasing council rents.

Our unions should be demanding a similar stance from Sadiq Khan and the GLA. In the meantime, we need to get organised across the job, particularly in immediately affected areas, to build for industrial action to resist the cuts.

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