Workers' Liberty

Tubeworker of 20/01/05 proposes a "no" vote to the hours-and-pay deal for signal operators and control staff. It also carries an article about the tsunami disaster, and workplace reports include an update on LUL's "Equalisation Process", and news of forthcoming local ballots for industrial action.

Read the text below, or click 'download' to read and download Tubeworker as a PDF.

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Signalling and Service Control Restructuring: Vote No
=== the money’s not enough === it divides us === we can win more ===

Signal operators and control staff were supposed to strike on New Years Eve and 4 January. RMT called off the action for a supposed breakthrough in the talks. The details which have filtered through since, however, show it to be anything but.

The issues were basically

> shorter working week - moving from 37.5 to 35 hours

> pay - longstanding claim for parity of signal operators with drivers

> local reps having a say in rostering

> job cuts - LUL proposed to redeploy a significant number of signal ops.

The proposals on the table give a 35-hour week. But with strings – changes in duty lengths to give more ‘flexible’ rostering, including 12-hour turns at weekends, and relief staff duties changed with just 48 hours notice.

The money on the table does not give parity with drivers, which is particularly galling given that some managers are getting whopping rises.

It also breaks up the signal operator grade into three levels. Under this proposal, rostered signal operators in some cabins (considered to be less busy/complex) will be paid less than signal operators at busier cabins. There will be another, higher pay band for relief signal operators.

It is divisive to have different people paid different rates for doing the same job. Maybe different locations have different complexities, but it is not cut and dried that a signal operator at Rickmansworth or Rayners Lane is doing a significantly different job from one at Amersham. Also, lower-banded cabins have more anti-social hours and lone working – which more than makes up for the supposedly ‘easier’ work!

It is not good enough to say that these matters can be sorted out after the 12-month review, or that cabins can be regraded. It is the principle of people being paid different rates for doing basically the same job that we oppose.

Pre-company plan, signal operators in different cabins had different rates of pay, but we are talking about the future now. After all, drivers on different lines used to receive different rates of pay, but no-one is arguing for this now!

A big problem is that some signal operators will be redeployed. For some time, there have been signal ops sitting spare to the roster, but this has not stopped LUL from recruiting more, plus modern apprentices.

Staff who will be displaced are capable signal operators, who will be made to work on a barrier in a station.

Their displacement benefits no-one. It is simply a result of management incompetence and inability to plan, that they took on too many people. Why should signal operators be made to pay the price? Additional staff should be held spare as signal operators and absorbed by natural wastage as people move on, take promotion etc.

We were in a very strong position before Christmas, with a huge vote for strikes and a strong mood for action. By recommending this deal and calling off the action, RMT’s leadership have demobilised people. The strikes were called off late on Christmas Eve, with no information sent to members until after New Year. In the meantime, rumours ran rife and everyone was confused and uncertain – not a good way to enjoy the festive season!

Vote no to this rubbish deal – if we stand strong together we can win a much better deal than this!

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Tsunami Disaster

None of us can have failed to be shocked and moved by the Asian earthquake and tsunami.

The earthquake and tsunami were a natural disaster which no political measure could have prevented. However, their impact was made much worse by the poverty and under-development in the areas affected.

Buildings, communications, transport, emergency and medical services can reduce casualties, but are weak in these areas. There is no tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean, unlike in the Pacific, where the USA set up such a system in 1948.

The generosity of ordinary people’s charitable donations has shamed governments into giving more than they would otherwise have done. Aid from governments such as the US and UK is welcome, but is a fraction of what they spend on war.

Meanwhile, the governments of rich countries offered to ‘suspend’ the debts of countries like Indonesia, when really, they should cancel the debt altogether.

Even as the bodies are still being counted, multinational corporations will be eyeing up the devastated area for the chance of lucrative ‘reconstruction’ contracts. these are the same corporations who like to st up big factories in poor areas so they can pay peanuts and keep communities in the sort of poverty that led to such massive loss of life.

Working people in these areas need our support in rebuilding their lives and fighing for dignity, decent wages and conditions, and trade union rights.

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Striking Over SPADs

ASLEF’s Christmas Eve strike on the Picc was well-supported. Despite management’s attempt to undermine it by letting drivers book on at Kings Cross, only 11 (out of 26) drivers scabbed. In the face of this solid action, by RMT as well as ASLEF drivers, Tubeworker looks forward to management backing down and reversing the savage wage cut imposed on the driver busted to SA.

In the future, though, we recommend that strikes like this should cover the whole line – if Acton had come out too, LUL might have caved in sooner. And wherever there is one worker in trouble, there is usually a more general issue. So how about combine-wide action over management’s heavy-handed treatment of SPADs?

Refusing Orders

District line drivers’ refusal to book on at Earls Court is having the desired effect. The action is solid, it’s affecting the service, and management look like they might give in.

About time too! For years, drivers have demanded decent facilities, and for years, LUL has promised improvements but delivered nothing.

Keep up the action, and beware LUL claiming that we need to ‘pay for’ decent facilities by ‘savings’ in other areas. You’re having a laugh.

Roster Trouble

On the East London Line, managers seem to think they can impose a new roster on 13 February. Problem is, none of the drivers want it – not surprisingly, as it has more anti-social hours and more driving time.

RMT will be balloting its members on the line for action short of strikes - so let’s make sure it is action that makes this roster unworkable.

Finsbury Park Ballot

RMT members on Finsbury Park group have called for a strike ballot because both of the local reps have been falsely accused of bullying the previous acting GSM. These accusations came to light in the DB brief of a Station Supervisor, who has been busted to SAMF using the harassment policy. This discredited policy has been used selectively against staff and not applied equally to claims against managers.

The local branch has decided that the only route for this to go is to ballot for action, as we have no faith in management investigating each other.

Please Hold

If you got your glossy card, you will know that Human Resources is now a call centre. Most people find call centres frustrating enough when you are paying your bills!

Now there’s even less chance of the ‘personal touch’ you’re supposed to get when dealing with staff issues.

EQUALISATION UPDATE

LUL’s ‘equalisation’ process is stage one of a jobs cull to ‘pay for’ the stations shorter working week. It is rapidly hitting the rocks.

The company is trying the old ‘divide and rule’ tactic. Where union reps convince them they can’t go through with one particular job cut, they conjure one up elsewhere.

LUL’s proposals are so ill-thought-out that the schedule is slipping. That said, progress seems rather more rapid on the groups where they want to cut staff than those where they (claim to) want to create jobs. Odd, that.

The job cuts involve making rosters more anti-social, with more extreme turns, fewer weekend days off etc. They will increase workload and stress, make us more likely to get assaulted, and worsen the two things that LUL claim to care most about – safety and customer service.

Of course, management know all this, but hey – there’s money to be saved.

Paying For It

LUL claims that it has to pay for the shorter working week, but does not explain why it has to be CSAs – the lowest-paid station grade – who have to pay the price.

Why not shed a few deadwood manager posts? Or cut directors’ inflated salaries? Or trim the budget for those trips away to plush hotels?

Or ask for more public funding? After all, this is a public transport system, not a profit-and-loss account.

Losing Nights?

At Wembley Park, LUL wants to do away with the night-turn SA. Can it be a coincidence that this is the same station where (as Tubeworker recently reported), the Infraco SPIC thought he was in charge of the station?!

Any loss of nights is the start of a slippery slope which ends with Infracos running stations in engineering hours, no LUL staff night turns, and a further huge cull of jobs.

Stopping The Jobs Cull

Since LUL’s ‘consultation’ is a farce, we need to fight to defend these jobs. We should: use the safety machinery to its full effect; link up reps and activists in the ‘equalisation’ groups and across the Underground; and gear up for industrial action by all grades affected. This includes drivers as well as station staff – after all, if the station staff have gone, who will help you with reversers, PEAs and other problems?

Reserves Deserve Better

LUL also plans to increase reserves to 37% of rostered numbers to cover the extra leave (and cut rostered posts to ‘pay for it’). So that’s hundreds more people being messed about, unable to plan their life, working at a different station every day, ...

Tubeworker reckons that rather than accept this, the unions should demand greater rights for reserves – more notice, better facilities, fairer rosters.

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