Everyone likes a sporting metaphor, right? So here's one Tubeworker correspondent's assessment of the state of play in the fight against job cuts and ticket office closures: it's 3-1 to management, with 80 minutes on the clock.
Management took the lead early on by announcing their radical restructuring of the staffing model for stations, planning to axe nearly 1,000 jobs and close all ticket offices. But we pegged them back by balloting straight away and by staging two solid strikes, in January and April, that forced them to make various changes to their plans and delay implementation by almost two years.
But since then, we've sat back, playing deep, when we should've been pressing our advantage. Management have stuck another two past us - beginning the closure of ticket offices, and refusing a serious consultation about local rosters and staffing levels, all while contemptuously demanding that staff be "flexible" by nominating to relocate to stations without seeing rosters or BNSs, and sending us on patronising training courses where we're told why an iPad can make up for not having a ticket office or even replace a CSA.
There's been some foot-dragging from our dugout: several players have called for more strikers to be sent on, but the coaches haven't acted.
Okay, enough with the football. The truth is, we're running out of time to push back management's cuts plan. Reps have been told they'll start seeing new proposed rosters from March (four months after management first promised a consultation process about local staffing levels), but even if management keep their word this time, there's no guarantee at all that discussions will result in any jobs being put back in.
In RMT, motions were sent to the Executive before Christmas (including one from Tubeworker supporters in Central Line East branch) calling for a reps' and activists' meeting to be convened to discuss restarting industrial action. The Executive has ratified the motion, but the meeting hasn't been convened. This kind of foot-dragging could seriously cost us.
It's not as if the appetite for more action isn't there. In fact, there's more appetite now than there has been for ages. Staff know management are taking the piss out of us by holding back the rosters, and the nightmare rosters that were leaked for some Northern Line stations show what they might have in store for us: working patterns that would damage our health and wreck our work-life balance. There's a mood to act, but some direction and drive from the unions is necessary.
Ticket office closures have already begun. That issue may now have to be fought primarily in the political arena, with union branches linking with community campaigns through the Hands Off London Transport coalition to keep the issue live in the run-up to the election. But the unions should use their resources, their Parliamentary links, and their press connections to keep up the profile of that issue and put pressure on LU to reverse the closures.
With figures following the Lancaster Gate stabbing showing that assaults on staff have risen by 44% in the last five years, we're all keenly aware that a reduction in staffing levels will mean a harder, more dangerous job for us and a worse service for passengers.
Now is the time to restart action to slam the brakes on those job cuts!
