Tubeworker's blog

Tubeworker online meeting, 21 March, 3pm: 40 Years Since the Miners' Strike

📢 A Tubeworker and Off The Rails public (Zoom) meeting

Thursday 21 March
15:00-17:00

In 1984-5, a strike by mine workers rocked the foundations of the British capitalist state. The strike was a counter-offensive against the Thatcher government’s class-war policy which aimed to smash the labour movement.

A long way to go on equality...

The latest edition of TfL's in-house magazine On The Move focuses on women's equality, profiling women workers in various parts of the network and discussing the steps the company has taken to improve the representation of women.

Free public transport? Why not?!

It’s a fairly mainstream view in Britain that healthcare, as a vital public service we all rely on, should be socially provided, for free, and funded by taxation.

Cleaning, catering, security, track protection: in house now!

Cleaners, catering and security staff, track protection workers, and others are employed by private companies rather than by LUL or TfL directly. Contracting out work to private companies is known as “outsourcing”. Invariably, outsourced workers have worse terms and conditions, and less secure work...

Bakerloopy?

An Evening Standard story covering a TfL report about the parlous state of the Bakerloo fleet was greeted with wry amusement in many mess rooms in Bakerloo depots and stations.

Some of the stats (630,500 lost customer hours in 2022-3) are shocking; it’s only thanks to the hard work of staff on the...

The Tube needs proper funding, not Tory posturing

Tory mayoral candidate Susan Hall has wheeled out one of her party’s favourite lines, a promise to revoke the nominee passes TfL staff can access for a co-habiting family member or friend.

Hall ridiculously claims that revoking the passes would generate hundreds of millions of additional revenue...

TSSA to ballot CSM members

TSSA is balloting its Customer Service Manager members across LU for industrial action against the ongoing restructure of the grade, with the ballot closing on 7 March.

The ballot is in part the result of pressure to do something, anything, about the restructure of the grade in which TSSA's LU...

Fight now on 2024-5 pay!

LUL unions remain in negotiations with the company over how to distribute the £30 million of additional funding secured thanks to RMT's threatened week of action from 5-11 January.

Thales workers vote on pay offer

RMT is recommending members working for Thales (GTS), a signalling and communications system contractor with numerous contracts on TfL/LUL, vote to accept the company's latest pay offer.

Last year, workers told their bosses a 5.5% offer for 2024 was not good enough. The new proposal adds a further...

New edition of Tubeworker bulletin now online!

The latest edition of our bulletin, collating content from our blog, is now online. Click here to download the PDF.

This edition reviews the recent developments in the LUL pay dispute, and discusses the implications for union organisation on the job. Plus, an update on the ABM cleaners' ballot, and...

Flattened Out

It was another autumn/winter of flats on the Piccadilly line, with some days seeing multiple trains being pulled out of service due to the noise.

Management still seem in denial about the scale of any problem. The controllers never suffer from the noise so they won't ever tell us to take a train...

Severe Delays

In news that came as a shock to no one, the date for the new Piccadilly line trains entering full service has been pushed back.

While the first train is still due before the end of 2025 (original date: 2014), the company say that with only half the money promised by government, they've had to push...

CSM restructure is a blow - but we shouldn't defend the former setup

LUL's restructure for Customer Service Managers on stations "went live" on 8 January, prompting some angry responses from workers who felt they hadn't been kept adequately informed of the developments and their implications.

Under the new structure, CSMs can choose between applying for an entirely...

RMT detrainment re-ballot: vote yes to renew mandate

RMT is re-balloting driver members on the Bakerloo, Central, District, Hammersmith & City, Jubilee, and Victoria lines to renew an industrial action mandate in the dispute over the imposition of "flash-and-dash", the unsafe detrainment method whereby drivers are expected to simply flash in-car...

A lesson for Aslef on LUL?

Tubeworker is a pro-union publication, but we are not affiliated with any particular union on London Underground/TfL. However, we do support industrial unionism - the idea that workers in a particular industry/workplace should be in the same union, rather than organising in separate unions on the...

LUL pay: why we need transparent negotiations

All four LUL unions have now re-entered pay talks with the company, with Mayor Khan's promise of £30m extra funding now on the table. To ensure we get the best outcome possible, we need the maximum possible transparency in those talks.

Threat of strikes wins concessions: name more dates to keep the pressure on!

RMT has suspended the strikes planned for the rest of this week, after an intervention from City Hall which commits £30 million of new money to re-opened pay negotiations. In the coming days, Tubeworker will host contributions from LU workers giving different views and responses to the suspension...

LUL: strike to win a decent pay rise!

Our week of action is now underway, after an RMT reps' meeting rightly decided that some crumbs from the bosses' table weren't enough to cancel our strikes.

With no movement on the basic pay element of management's offer, which remains at 5%, and no flat-rate minimum for the lowest-paid, it's...

New edition of Tubeworker bulletin now online!

The final edition of Tubeworker bulletin of 2023 is now online.

Click here to read the bulletin.

This edition looks forwards to strike over LUL pay in January, and encourages all readers to support ABM cleaners' industrial action ballot.

Why directly-employed staff must help the cleaners' fight

Everyone on LU, directly-employed or outsourced, is part of a collective. We all contribute our labour to ensure the system can run. If any group of workers face unsafe or exploitative conditions, that’s a problem for all of us.

Station staff, drivers, train maintainers, engineers and office...

Inequality Street

Being a cleaner is one of the most difficult and frequently unpleasant jobs on the Tube, as well as one of the lowest paid.

So it’s always nice to get some reward and recognition, especially at this time of year. So you can imagine the joy felt by ABM staff across the combine upon discovering the delivery of small cellophane bags containing seven — yes, seven — Quality Street chocolates in various mess rooms.

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