Workers' Liberty

RMT's strike ballot on TubeLines has come back with a whopping mandate for action: 266-42 (85%) for strikes, 289-24 (92%) for action short of strikes.

Metronet and TubeLines workers' strike committee met last night to co-ordinate their action across the entire network.

It's two years since the last pay deal on TubeLines. That deal included a commitment to negotiate the payment of allowances to workers undertaking Protection Master and Site Person In Charge duties.

A CSA at Euston station was standing on the gateline, when a ceiling tile landed on his head!

TubeLines is threatening to close the ERU's Tottenham depot, with staff displaced elsewhere. Not good if you live locally and want to carry on working there!

Tip to TubeLines. When replacing a defective position detector on a set of points, make sure that you do not replace it with one that is also defective.

Just when we were being encouraged to believe that there is nothing wrong with PPP as a concept, just that Metronet are a particularly dodgy company, along comes a reminder that Tubelines, also, are capable of fouling things up.

Metronet gets most of the headlines for incompetence, but let us not forget TubeLines.

• Last week at Chalk Farm, contractors working overnight booked off and left the signals failing at the start of traffic.
  
  

A TubeLines Site Person in Charge accepted a forged Permit to Enter to a machine chamber at Old Street. The Station Supervisor picked up on it, and the unauthorised person left the station, but TubeLines did not query their procedures on how this had come about.

Night cleaners have been removed on the Central line and District line. These cleaners work for ISS, the same company that is trying to lay off 200 cleaners on TubeLines contracts at the moment - a move that RMT is fighting.

TubeLines has announced a cut of one-fifth in the value of its cleaning contract. This can only lead to attacks on cleaners' jobs and already-appalling terms and conditions, and to (even) worse standards of cleaning and therefore of safety.

LUL and the Infracos have allowed even the most vital, safety-critical services to be contracted out. One result is a crisis of confidence in Protection Masters as the role is given to cowboy companies who do not train their people properly.

Management want to impose a vastly anti-social roster for fleet staff at Northfields, making them work on Saturday nights when they have not done before. Social life?! Humbug!

Metronet and Tubelines have revived their plan to make their staff book on duty using a 'smartcard'. This would carry biometric data with a capacity to include everything from fingerprints to credit records.

Specialist P-way workers who use ultrasonic kit to check for cracked rails are employed by TubeLines but also provide the service to Metronet. That was, until Metronet got the hump about the prices TubeLines was charging them.

Alex Ansah, for many years the night cleaner at Caledonian Road and also an RMT representative, has been forced to move work locations. Why? Because he stood up to a Tubelines Manager, who was trying to intimidate him into using unsafe working practices. We want Alex back at Caledonian Road and we want the Tubelines Manager dealt with.

Meanwhile, TubeLines have settled for a two-year deal with a 4% rise this year.

Believe it or not, Metronet and TubeLines are proposing to make workers sign in and out using their fingerprints. We can not confirm rumours that we will also have our rights read to us, hold up a card with our staff number on it, wear a suit with arrows on, eat porridge and be allowed only one phone call per week.

RMT has submitted its pay claim to TubeLines, and TubeLines has responded. So the opening skirmishes will begin.

RMT has asked for a one-year deal and a 'substantial' pay rise for staff. It is the general practice of the union not to put a figure on its pay claims. Tubeworker tends to think that it would be better if it did, so that the workforce knows what it is fighting for, and can see if the union is trying to sell it short. Which, we suspect, is why the union bureaucracy prefers the vague term 'substantial'!

The last few weeks’ events on the Northern line have shown three important things: PPP is a safety disaster; it is Tube workers, not management, who care about safety; and that if we stand firm, we can win.

Flippin' 'eck, it's happened again. Last night, the Northern Line's emergency braking system failed for the fourth time in fourth weeks.

Well, you could knock us down with a feather. TfL's second annual report on the PPP has stated that the Infracos' performance is "not good enough".

Now, why could they possibly think that?

When a Morden Train Maintainer with 30 years' service was sacked recently, something very ominous came to light. It seems that Alstom and TubeLines now have a policy to D&A test staff as part of their annual relicensing.

Underground employers already have the power to test us post incident, for cause, and unannounced. So this extra testing round is not about keeping people bright-eyed and sober, but about keeping us under an ever-more-authoritarian thumb.

If Alstom and TubeLines get away with this, you can bet that Metronet and LUL will be next. So let's unite to stop it.