Revealed: London Underground Jobs Massacre

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

Shocking, but not surprising - RMT reveals this morning that London Underground plans to close 144 ticket offices and shed 1,200 jobs. Having broken his promise on snow day pay, let's see whether Boris Johnson will break his promise on ticket office closures too!

Leaking these plans now gives us a headstart in defeating them. Management were on the back foot on this morning's TV news, insisting that the jobs massacre plan has not yet been decided. This gives them a way out, so if we crank up sufficient pressure on them, they could "decide" on something less severe instead. If they do, theat would be a first win for us, but we should not be fooled into accepting a "lesser" job-cutting attack: one job cut is one too many.

We also have an advantage in that RMT's rank-and-file reps and activists had already identified the likelihood of job cuts coming our way, and got the Regional Council to adopt a detailed strategy to fight them. We now need to step up the action to carry out that strategy, and to ensure that the union's head office - which did a good job with its news release this morning - is right there with us in this fight.

And we need action from the other unions too. TSSA simply can not stand by and let its core membership grades be slaughtered like this - or can it? And if ASLEF's leaders trot out the usual nonsense about how this does not affect drivers, then the Society's rank-and-file members must not swallow it.

We beat the last attempt at mass closures of ticket offices - if we fight a strong, united political and industrial campaign, and if our unions do their jobs properly, we can beat this one too.

Trade Unions

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