Workers' Liberty

The pay dispute is getting ridiculous. It is now nearly six months since we should have been paid. Yet management won't give us our pay rise this year because they can't get the unions' agreement for what they want for future years. It's outrageous - if they want to keep talking to our unions about late running, next year's pay rise etc, then by all means do - but there is no excuse for withholding this year's rise while they do so. Give us our money and keep talking!

To make matters worse, LUL wants the unions to sign up to a deal that once extra leave for drivers has been sorted, the unions have "no outstanding issues" over later running. What about door-to-door staff taxis?! That's one of the most important issues for staff, who quite rightly do not want to be walking through dangerous locations at three in the morning.

The unions are quite right to refuse to agree to what management have put on the table at the moment, even though that leaves members still waiting for our rise. The unions must insist that the company pays up for this year NOW.

On top of this, the company is still insisting on its laughable £250 bonus. Tube workers know that this is an arbitrary, unfair, divisive insult. Part of our income each year will depend on whether randomly-picked commuters are in a good or a bad mood when someone with a clipboard asks them how satisfied they are. If their journey has been delayed because the Infracos have cocked up again, then they will be very dissatisfied and LUL staff will lose out even though it is not our fault!

ASLEF and TSSA seem to be silent on the issue, and the last two personal letters from Bob Crow to RMT members have not mentioned it either. This is one of the issues that union members most want to fight over, so the union needs to pay it some more attention.

While the unions rightly fight for drivers to have extra leave for working later on Friday and Saturday nights, this is unfortunately causing some resentment amongst station staff, who did not get any such compensatory leave when the unions agreed late running under the shorter working week. On the other hand, even with drivers getting extra leave, (full-time) station staff will still have more days off, because they earn them through banked rest days. Drivers don't get those banked rest days because the unions (in the first place, ASLEF) sold them a crap deal for their 35-hour week back in 1996 - a time when station staff had only just won a 40-hour week!

Neither grade is getting privileges over the other here. The complex (and faintly ludicrous) set of circumstances outlined in the previous paragraph has its roots in the Company Plan and the unions' failure to defeat it. Before Company Plan, all grades were on the same hours. Company Plan changed that, and since then, the divisions have festered, made worse by the workforce being divided into different unions, some of which (ASLEF and TSSA) only represent certain grades.

RMT, as an all-grades union, has the potential to unite the grades and win more for all of us, but although it submits all-grades pay claims, the background of defeat and division can leave it not acting as much like an all-grades union as it should.

ASLEF and TSSA are worryingly quiet, making us think that they are not up for a fight over pay. RMT is at least in dispute. But our confidence in our unions' willingness to stand up over this is slipping.

We should demand this year's pay rise now (preferably higher than 4%!). If management continue to wtihhold it on completely unreasonable grounds, then we must ballot for strike action without further delay.