Read the news today, oh boy...

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

Who else saw the full-page ad LU management took out in the Evening Standard and Metro yesterday (23 April)?

(For the text of the ad, click here.)

It's quite a read; a spectacular exercise in manipulation, distortion, and deception. Within the second sentence, it mentions the 24-hour "Night Tube" and the 2012 Olympics, two things management know are popular with passengers, even though neither has anything to do with the current dispute. It's cheap trick to get people on their side.

The first point, "Why we need to change", repeats the lie that "only 3% of journeys involve a visit to the ticket office", which has already been irrefutably debunked here.

The ad also recycles the nonsensical idea that ticket office staff are somehow "hidden" from the public, and that by closing ticket offices and slashing jobs, staff will be more visible. If LU wanted to make ticket office staff more visible, they should invest in better signage for ticket offices so they're more easily identifiable for customers!

The ad's claim that "significant changes" have been made to the plans has already been taken apart by Tubeworker in the last week, here and here.

There's also the highly misleading claim that no member of staff will be "forced" out of their job. Well... that depends on the definition of the word "forced". Currently (note: currently), the proposals don't include any compulsory redundancies. But what if you're a SCRA or a SAMF with mobility issues, who isn't up to standing on the gateline or the platform for eight hours at a time? By abolishing your grade, and the role that allowed you to do work compatible with your physical abilities and needs, you are effectively being forced out of your job. And what if you're a worker with childcare or other caring commitments for whom the likelihood of displacement, and therefore increased travelling time, means you can no longer balance those commitments with work? And what if you're an older worker, or a disabled worker, for whom the emphasis on extreme shifts and fewer weekends in the new rosters makes work-life balance unbearable? Again, you're effectively forced out.

The ad concludes by saying: "One union, the RMT, has demanded that all modernisation be stopped". This is a complete lie. RMT does not oppose "modernisation" (the meaning of which is highly contested, despite management's claims that it simply means "whatever we decide to do"), it opposes job cuts, ticket office closures, and attacks on terms and conditions. There's a difference.

Tubeworker, and our sister bulletin for mainline railway workers Off The Rails, has consistently argued that, if new technologies and even automation can be introduced in a way that does not negatively affect jobs, terms and conditions, worker and passenger safety, and quality of service, then they should be welcomed. The problem with management's plans is not that they are "modern", it's that they use new technologies as a tool for slashing jobs and pay rather than making workers' lives easier and passengers' service better.

All of this confirms what we already knew: that management are dishonest and are prepared to play fast and loose with the truth in their attempts to pull the wool over the public's eyes. But it also tells us something about the role of the mass media in general, and how it's used by bosses (not just ours).

The Standard and the Metro will continue to be used as bosses' weapons during this dispute. Not only are they hoping to turn the public against us, they're hoping to chip away at our morale, too. And there's no doubt it can be depressing to be at work in the run up to a strike next to a big stack of newspapers with headlines screaming about how greedy and selfish we are, and how we're "holding London to ransom".

It's unlikely LU had to pay for the ad space in these two mass-circulation papers, read by thousands of commuters in London every day. They already have a relationship with both publications, which are distributed in LU stations, so can use them as free propaganda. The owners of the papers are themselves capitalists, with an interest in attacking unions and driving down social costs like wages.

We don't have access to mass media. We only have whatever literature (online and printed) the trade union and socialist movements can produce, and although we don't yet have the mass reach of the daily newspapers, developing our own literature is vital to provide a counterweight to the bosses' propaganda.

During the 1934 Minneapolis teamsters' (truck drivers) strike in America, the strikers produced their own daily newspaper, the Northwest Organiser. We're not quite in the position to do that yet, but that's the sort of thing we should aspire to. In the meantime, let's make sure our picket lines are well-supplied with clear, accessible materials setting out our case that we can distribute to the public.

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