Stations Ballot: Vote Yes/Yes!

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

RMT has begun balloting members on stations for strikes, and action short of strikes, against the fallout from "Fit for the Future". Tubeworker encourages all readers to vote yes/yes!

Our correspondents at the latest round of "Managing Our Stations" training courses at Ashfield House tell us that new LU Managing Director Mark Wild attended, and when put on the spot about cuts, admitted that LU had cut too deep and that the current model was unworkable! You couldn't make it up.

LU bosses' "solution" is, so rumour has it, a grade-based shuffle-around, which may see additional CSS jobs created at the expense of CSM2 positions. Our solution is different: renewed funding to increase frontline staffing at all levels.

That's what this dispute is all about. We're striking for jobs, safety, work/life balance, and an accessible service for our passengers.

Tubeworker believes our unions should be ready with a strategy the day the ballot result comes back; to formulate that, unions should call reps and activists' meetings in the next 10 days so we can hit the ground running when the vote closes on 15 November. We'd like to see an immediate overtime ban called, with a programme of strikes to follow that up. We should emulate the approach of the RMT in the inspiring Southern Rail dispute: not just naming one or two days of strikes and then waiting-and-seeing, but announcing a whole programme of action stretching over months, letting both bosses and members know we're in it to win it. Coordinating action with live disputes involving drivers on the Hammersmith and City and Piccadilly Lines, and possibly others too, is also a must.

We've got a big fight ahead of us. The background to all of this is the cuts to TfL/LU's central government subsidy, which the Tories want to slash to zero by 2020. We need Sadiq Khan, a Labour mayor, to publicly demand and campaign for that subsidy to be reinstated. The Tories need to know that the consequence of pushing ahead with those cuts is indefinite industrial unrest.

We can get the travelling public behind us on this one; the Tories' plans would mean London would be the only major metropolitan transport system in the world without a central government subsidy. Passengers know that's madness. They want a properly funded, properly staffed Tube network. Unions should accompany our industrial action with a political campaign to pressure the GLA and the government, and build public support for increasing staffing levels and reopening ticket offices.

RMT members: make sure you return your ballots by 15 November. Vote yes/yes!

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