Tubeworker's blog

As LU top brass work out how best to sack our workmates, they are also busy giving new jobs to one another. Within days of Mike Brown becoming head of LU, having returned from strike busters British Airways, he is creating a new role for the previous acting MD. Richard Parry will take on a new role...

We were informed the other day of the ‘good news’ that our Continuous Development Program (CDP) will be shorter: two days for supervisors and one day for CSAs.

We might breathe a sigh of relief at the thought of less time sat in a classroom.

But this is not good news. It is important to defend...

The Evening Standard, The Sun and other right-wing rags were full this week of the ‘story’ that RMT General Secretary hurled abuse at Morecambe’s manager at a match with Dagenham and Redbridge.

The only ‘story’ here is basically that ... Bob Crow went to a football match. His behaviour, which was...

A whiteboard message recently appeared at Tottenham Court Road. 'David Cameron is our new PM. We're all doomed'. That's most accurate public service information we've seen in a long time.

After Labour threw the election away by betraying the working-class voters who elected it, we now have a Tory...

The "new" East London line, now extended, is about to be opened with much pride and ceremony.

Has anyone noticed an unsightly bulge that has appeared on the latest version of the tube map? It occurs to the east of the central zone [zone 1] and incorporates Shoreditch station within the zone, thus...

Bank staff were alarmed to find out that the Kone standby escalator engineer was to be removed from the station. With massive project work on ancient and fragile escalators, the station needs an engineer permanently available, not at the end of a lengthy phone line. But those who held the purse...

Wednesday saw little sign of any Picc line trains in central London, with an early-doors derailment that sent the job well and truly up the wall.

It seems that in its dying days, Tube Lines has really excelled itself, as it managed to derail an engineering train in an area (Earls Court) without any...

Serco Docklands has been fined nearly half a million quid after one of its trains killed a man who had strayed onto the track.

Another passenger alerted the police, who asked the control room to check, but they could not spot anyone on track. It was only when they spotted a copper on the...

Little-noticed by a media focusing on one bunch of scoundrels trying to form a government with another bunch of scoundrels, it seems that the despised and discredited London Underground Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is dead. TfL is to buy Tube Lines from its shareholders Bechtel and Ferrovial...

Tubeworker has been enjoying dishing out leaflets to the public along with dozens of workmates. It soon becomes clear that plenty of passengers have not fallen for London Underground's attempt to convince them that cutting their station staff and ticket office opening times will improve their...

Reserve CSAs on Liverpool Street group have a guaranteed weekend off every four weeks. Management evidently think that they are living the life of Riley so have announced that they want to cut it to every six weeks.

Charming - you'd better start asking your kids to make appointments a couple of...

One of the new features of the Vic line's 09 stock is the 'sensitive edge', whcih enables the doors to detect even quite small obstructions and to stop the train. In 1997, a boy was killed at Holborn station when a train dragged him by the toggle of his coat caught in a door, so this new tehcnology...

London Underground workers have opened our pay slips this week to find that our pay rise, and our bonus, are missing.

It was obviously a bitter pill for management to swallow when they had to give us a 4.2% rise having hoped that their two-deal offer had trapped us into fractional rises. Could it...

Generous to a fault as ever, London Underground management have said that staff left stranded by the volcanic ash cloud will have to lose either pay or leave.

It's like the 'snow day pay' issue all over again - staff unable to make it to work due to a natural phenomenon entirely beyond our control...

To say that New Labour has disappointed the millions of working people who voted for it is a huge understatement. It introduced the disastrous PPP on London Underground, has pushed privatisation across the public serivce, kept - and even enhance - the Tories' anti-union laws, and given bigbusiness...

The March edition of the Ticketing and Revenue news praises the success of the five pound minimum top-up, with top-ups at the window of less than a fiver falling from 200,000 to below 100,000 per week.

It lists the top stations who have achieved massive reductions in transactions less than £5 at...

One of the issues under discussion in our fight against job cuts is: Will those grades where no jobs are in line to be cut - eg. station supervisors, drivers, service control - support the fight to defend the jobs that are in the firing line?

There are two obvious reasons why they should:
1...

Management have tried plenty of ways to get us to collaborate in the abolition of our own jobs. Making us work on understaffed stations, stopping us providing decent customer service from the ticket office, etc.

So why go along with this if we don't have to?! Remember you have the right to:

-...

The question on everyone's lips at the moment is: where's our bonus? Did we qualify for the £250? Or the £500?!

We all know very well that we've worked our socks off all year in difficult circumstances, so we certainly deserve the £500 (though we'd rather have it as a consolidated pay rise rather...

Bullshit detectors to hand, everyone, as various senior managers drag themselves out from behind their desks to try to persuade us of the virtues of doing away with our jobs.

Tubeworker predicts ... current economic climate ... blah blah ... need to provide value for money ... blah blah ... changes...

Three staff from the Special Requirements Team smelt a rat when they were rushed at short notice to Green Park Station and arrived to find hardly any rostered staff present.

The Supervisors were unhappy that SRT had been sent blatantly to cover duties. The SRT rang their manager who gave them the...

Has anyone else noticed a bizarre document entitled ‘Gateline Huddling Focus’ circulated around their stations?
It announces a ‘Network Focus’ to ‘improve customer perception and the “Attention to Customer” measure’. With startling insight, it points out that, ‘These two elements are connected...

London Underground management have sped out of the blocks with their job-cutting plan. They have told admin staff to submit preference forms to be allocated new posts or face displacement by May; they intend to publish new stations rosters by June, reorganise groups by the autumn and have 7-800 of...

In the same week that London Underground announced 800 job cuts, LU was told to stump up an extra £460 million on top of its £4 billion budget to help private contractor Tube Lines deliver its contract. Even Boris has complained that taxpayers are being asked to write a ‘blank cheque’ to fund this...

- We did not create LU's financial crisis. Private contractors have plundered billions from LU. It beggars belief that the cartel of private businesses that made a fortune out of Metronet were able to walk away scot-free when it collapsed. London Underground picked up the £2.5 billion deficit. The...

On the weekend the Northern Line was closed between Golders Green and Euston, local reps had assurances that no one would be moved from Hampstead and Belsize Park, both section 12 stations. The Framework Agreement says staff cannot be moved (except for unanticipated situations, which this was not)...

As a driver I can't do my job alone. For me to carry out my duties safely and do my bit to keep the service running on time, which in turn reduces crowding and maintains safety, I need to work with station staff.

Platforms in the peak or during service disruptions are chaotic. At crowded...

'The Sun' took an interest in tube stations shutting last week, as a short closure of Arsenal station gave it an excuse to trot out the old anti-union cliches about railworkers mucking up the service by demanding too many tea breaks.

The truth of the matter is that a member of station staff at...

An appalling incident at Kenton station this morning shows just what risks London Underground are taking with safety with their compulsion to drive down staff numbers.

Sadly, there was a 'person under a train'. But a diffcult situation became much worse than it needed to be. Firstly, because the...

We are mostly hearing the right noises from RMT about fighting London Underground's plan to cull up to 800 jobs. We've heard little so far from ASLEF, but what's this - a TSSA press release?

After a justified pop at BoJo, TSSA General Secretary spoils it all by writing "We shall fight this all the...