In LUL's latest effort to drive its own customers away, company management called Cubic to the Pentonville Road side of King's Cross station today to disable the ticket-issuing facility on the Queue Busting Machine (QBM).
You see, if your glossy adverts and seductive slogans don't persuade...
Duty sheets have appeared at Waterloo with certain CSA duties marked as 'SRT'.
Ahem, but doesn't the SRT Framework specifically state that the SRT can not be used to cover duties on the roster?! Well yes, but why let the small matter of the rules get in the way of a management attempt to pull a...
Yesterday, the day our ballot papers went out, the Consumer Price Index of 3.2% confirmed our costs have risen, while O% on the Retail Price Index threatened that our wages will freeze. Even the press can see we have reason to be angry. Don't let them tell you we don't need a pay rise. We knew it...
The day before the ballot papers go out to all LUL, ex-Metronet and Tfl RMT members, things are looking good for a solid yes vote. Metronet say there are no weak areas, drivers are showing they are up for a fight. Low-paid CSAs are angry at the appalling pay offer and many will strike for the...
London Underground's 'Rainbow' software sounds the alarm whenever it spots a 'pattern' of non-attendance. It is quite bad enough that these 'patterns' are often simply coincidences. But what makes matters worse is that they are also picking up on absences for which you should not get even the hint...
The destruction caused by the profit-driven madness of capitalism has been tearing like a hurricane through peoples' lives, taking casualties every step of the way. People are hit hardest where they have no way of defending themselves.
Other people in other unions have taken the hit because their...
ISS have announced that it will not pay the London Living Wage of £7.45 from April after all.
The cleaners' strike last summer was called to a halt when most of the cleaning companies began paying the London Living Wage. ISS, contracted in by TubeLines, said they would phase it in. They paid a...
Usually, when we are voting for strike action, workers tend to just wait for union head offices to tell us what action we will be taking. But it's our strike, so we are entitled to an opinion - and many of us have ideas and views on the subject.
Most people know now that a 24-hour strike will not...
Will we get £500 or £250 for our Customer Satisfaction Bonus? We've been asking as often as we have about our pay rise! It makes you wonder whether the bonus was invented to distract our attention away from management's nightmare issue - the unions' fight for a pay rise.
We're waiting for the last...
As TfL/LUL management tell us that we have to lose jobs and tighten our belts because of the recession, you might wonder whether this is the right time for them to be living it up at a slap-up, back-slapping awards ceremony. But yes, they hot-footed it down to the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith for a...
Willesden Green group station staff have voted Yes to strikes, and to action short of strikes, against their bullying local management.
Tubeworker has not got the exact figures, but we understand that it was about a 3:1 majority on a better-than-average turnout. After some recent ballots for action...
It is excellent news that RMT is pressing ahead with a ballot for industrial action. The union is balloting all grades in LUL - stations,revenue, trains, service control, admin, managers, ex-Metronet, the lot - and its members on TfL too. The ballots should lead to strike and other action over jobs...
As Tubeworker reported previously, LUL management are using their own tight-fisted refusal to install Correct-Side Door Opening on the Vic Line as a stick to beat drivers with.
In an act of outrageous harshness, LUL has sacked driver Carl Campbell. Carl - not protected by the CSDE kit that...
Tubeworker has been pondering LUL management's ridiculous 'argument' that because we live in changeable economic times, we need the 'stability' of a five-year pay freeze/cut. In fact, the opposite is true: the unpredictability of the economy is a very good reason to negotiate pay each year, rather...
As Tubeworker has reported previously, LUL's ridiculous £5 minmum Oyster trial has gone off like a damp squib, with most staff quite rightly ignoring it and selling customers what they ask for.
RMT rightly called on its members not to co-operate, but TSSA was its usual weak self and refused to...
A cutting to the west of Acton Town needs stabilising. Metronet bosses have come up with a bright idea for how to organise the work - but although they have convinced themselves that their idea is safe, it is far from it.
The plant will be moved onto the site during engineering hours, but the work...
Fred Dappah, RMT cleaner rep at Hammersmith depot, has been sacked. Despite having permission to work while his status in under consideration, his employer decided to sack him for not having permanent papers! Or perhaps it was for being an assertive and effective union rep?!
Fred is the latest in a...
The new issue of the printed Tubeworker bulletin is now available online.
Download it here.
LUL's appalling £5 minimum Oyster top-up trial is up and running - or up and stumbling, more like. Most staff are committed to the 'world class customer service' management continually tell us about, so are happily selling customers whatever top-up they ask for.
That's because we understand that...
If so, it's not funny.
LUL wants us to sign up to a five-year - yes, five-year - deal, where they give us RPI+1% in the first year and RPI only for the next four years. And what do we get for this? Shorter hours? Better pensions? Increased staffing levels? More leave? No - we get nothing.
RPI...
RMT is likely to hold a strike ballot soon over jobs and pay, after its regional council unanimously endorsed three resolutions from branches calling for action.
Quite right too. It is particularly good to see the union considering action in time for the date our pay rise is due, rather than...
Workers at Emcor Rail, who are contracted in by Tubelines to do infrastructure work, were told that they would lose their jobs, while others would have to take pay cuts, lose holiday, and other benefits.
The RMT was invited in by their manager to break this bad news to the workforce. The...
While upgrading the signalling system on the Jubilee Line extension, Tubelines have laid miles and miles of the wrong kind of cable, setting the upgrade project back by months. Some high-up managers will have a lot of questions to answer on how a cock-up of this magnitude could come about. This...
Tubeworker has long advocated that the unions need to make themselves more relevant in the workplace, and one way of doing this is to run more democratic decision-making at work. So we are delighted to report that RMT elected its local reps for Leytonstone drivers in a ballot held on site at the...
LUL is about to run two 'trials' on stations, both of which are bad news for staff.
The trial of 'Textback' - encouraging passengers to text in comments about the serivce and about staff - starts on Rickmansworth group tomorrow, followed by the trial of the £5 mimimum Oyster top-up on five zone 1...
Apparently, transport workers go off sick less often than any other type of worker. Those judgemental types at The Guardian find this "surprising", but the figures, compiled by the Office of National Statistics, speak for themselves: only 0.8% of us have been off sick in the last week, compared with...
LUL management are again rattling their sabres and threatening to displace CSAs. As readers will recall, the company employs "too many" CSAs (ha ha), mainly as a result of incompetence on its own part and that of its private-sector 'partners'. Seemingly unwilling to let time take its course and...
LUL seems to have a problem fitting safe and comfortable seats in drivers' cabs - and with drivers who complain about it.
On the Central Line, an RMT safety rep is refusing to drive because the seats pose such a danger to back health.
And on the Northern line, one particular manager has taken it...
Piccadilly Line drivers are anxiously awaiting the judgment in Zak Khan's appeal against dismissal, and preparing for industrial action should LUL management reject the appeal.
Zak had a SPAD, over-running the first semi on the way out of Boston Manor eastbound. Management have had the cheek to...
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