48-Hour Strike On Metronet
Here's RMT's Press Release:
Publication Date: April 18 2008
Company fails to provide uniquivocal written guarantees
RMT's 2,500 members at failed privateer Metronet will strike for 48 hours from 10:30am on Monday April 28 after failing to win unequivocal written guarantees on outsourcing, pensions and travel facilities.
The union has been seeking guarantees that when Metronet contracts are transferred to TfL, none of its 2,500 Metronet members will be transferred to other employers, and that all will be allowed to join the TfL pension scheme and receive the same travel facilities as other TfL employees.
Members voted by a margin of more than four to one to strike.
"Despite weeks of detailed talks and positive discussions with the mayor we have still not won the unequivocal written guarantees we are seeking to protect our members' interests," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.
"What we have received has been hedged, qualified and ambiguous, and the RMT executive was left with no choice but to set strike dates.
"Even at this stage the solution to this dispute remains a simple letter away, but we have been adamant throughout this whole sorry affair that our members will not be made to pay for the collapse of the PPP and the shameful behaviour of Metronet's shareholders.
"The shareholders who walked away from Metronet's corpse are being rewarded with fat PFI contracts, yet the people who have stuck with the job of improving the Tube are supposed to accept uncertainty over their jobs, pensions and conditions. That is not on.
"We have already made it clear that the collapse of Metronet should not be used as a Trojan horse for a two-tier workforce," Bob Crow said.
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