Tubeworker is backing Steve Hedley in the election for RMT Regional Organiser.
On the key issues within the union - democracy, rank-and-file control, willingness to take on the employers, commitment to cross-grades unity and an active organising strategy, Steve is on the right side. We will carry...
23 people, including a child, were stuck in the lift at Elephant & Castle for nearly an hour and a half last Friday. Why? Because LUL had staffed up the station with scab managers to keep it open during the station staff's strike, and they didn't seem to have a clue how to actually work the lifts...
RMT cleaners have achieved an important success - the 'London living wage' for all Tube cleaners. It was won by brave and determined efforts by a vulnerable section of workers and their supporters, and should inspire and provide an example for others.
This has been a campaign of perhaps historic...
RMT has suspended its strike action after TubeLines made the following two-year offer:
Year 1:
Our fat-cat boss, Tim Parker, has resigned after less than three months in the job.
As Tubeworker pointed out at the time, top jobs like this should be elected, and it seems that Tim has belatedly come to realise this himself. Or maybe he just doesn't fancy working for nothing when his other...
Tube workers take a dramatic stand for our rights this week, with several strikes adding to each others' effectiveness:
LUL obviously finds cross-track projection (XTP) very exciting and very lucrative. We hear figures of £150m doing the rounds, and with that much on the table, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if the company does not want to be troubled by small matters such as safety. With such an important income...
Yesterday, on a day when ISS had summoned around 100 cleaners to present their immigration papers at their offices in Greenwich, activists from the Campaign Against Immigration Controls organised to hit back at ISS’s ongoing use of immigration legislation to crush the cleaners’ dispute.
...
East Ham staff have delivered a whopping Yes vote for strike action against the rampant bullying on their group and to demand the reinstatement of Sarah Hutchins. 40+ RMT members voted Yes, just 2 No. Hardly surprising given the regime on the group, but it is still good news to see East Ham taking a...
Tubeworker's report from the front line ...
Thursday 7th August arrived and it was Rickmansworth Group's chance to show their industrial mettle over the dispute with London Underground's Human Resources and the enforced relocation of 5 CSAs.
Despite the short turnaround time of a week to get...
Management find themselves with a few dozen drivers 'above numbers' at Loughton and Leytonstone depots, so are rattling their sabres and threatening forced displacements.
When the East London Line was closed down in preparation for extension and privatisation, drivers (and other staff) were...
Mo Makboul, a member of ticket office staff at Waterloo, was sacked in April when a customer complained of his aggressive behaviour. He told her he couldn’t refund her bus pass, then left the ticket office to return it to her. The customer first told the disciplinary panel that he had sworn at her...
Workers at CBS, the company who have the contracts for putting up advertising posters on the Tube, have gone on strike over pay and a list of injustices that have mounted over the years. There were around 40 people on the picket line at their depot at Blackhorse Road last night, and 20 yesterday...
Management are warming up for an onslaught on our union reps.
They have unilaterally decided that service control can't have level one reps in the future, are denying RMT local reps in three train crew depots, refuse to recognise an extra RMT rep on a station group where it has over 150 members...
CBS Outdoor staff - the people who put up advertising posters in stations - are to strike for four days to demand a better pay offer. Having voted 65-6 for strikes, and 64-7 for action short of strikes, they will walk out for four days (which will be two shifts each) from Thursday morning to Monday...
Funny how a company can make huge profits but still 'can't afford' to give its workers a decent pay rise. Or not so funny, if you work for TubeLines.
The Infraco's derisory offer would leave workers trailing behind people doing the same jobs in Metronet. It also leaves TubeLines with a two-tier...
Rickmansworth groups RMT members have voted by a stunning 93% for strike action against forced displacements - with a 44% turnout that is very creditable given the one-week ballot period. They will strike on Thursday 7th.
Charing Cross group station staff held a day’s strike action in support of a...
Remember how we fought off management's attempts to move staff off the gateline at Embankment? Well, they are back for another try!
Management want more platform duties, and neither Tubeworker nor the local staff have a problem with that - so long as we get the extra staff to cover those duties...
Brent Trades Council held a meeting of around 50 people to defend a cleaner rep at Stonebridge park depot sacked during the strike - then put its commitment to solidarity into practice immediately by marching down the road to Stonebridge depot when the meeting finished, where another cleaner rep was...
When Goodge Street station was opened at the start of traffic the other week, the Online Battery Inverter was down, so the station had no back-up source of power. The Station Supervisor rang the DSM, pointing out that the Rule Book states that the station should therefore be closed. The DSM's...
Wembley Park is due to become one of LUL's 'super-depots'. New drivers will come in, taking numbers to over 200, and it will be an important place for meal reliefs.
They had better sort the place out then! The canteen roof is knackered even though it is new, there are leaks aplenty, and the air...
Busking supervisors have suddenly found themselves out of a job, and station supervisors have found themselves wondering who on earth is suppposed to be supervising the buskers.
It seems that the sponsorship deal ran out, and LUL decided to take busking supervision inhouse. Here at Tubeworker, we...
Management appear to be struggling to fill the jobs in their much-vaunted Special Requirements Team (SRT).
Tubeworker is not hugely surprised. A few people's idea of a perfect job might involve travelling over a wide distance in your own time, never getting to settle at one work location, and...
The cleaners grade meeting on Friday 25th July agreed that we will need more strikes to win the strike demands for all cleaners. The dates have now been set: from 05:30 on Thursday 21 until 05:29 on Saturday 23 August. Concrete proposals for the next strikes include targeted mass picketing on lines...
The loss of the Glasgow East by-election - one of Labour's safest seats - confirms what we must already know: that New Labour is dead. Blair, then Brown, have marched Labour away from its history as a party set up to represent working-class interests, and their betrayals are now marching Labour to...
LUL management have surpassed even themselves, sacking a member of station staff using a completely different company's discplinary procedure. They somehow got it into their heads that because the staff member used to work for Silverlink, they could sack her at a hearing convened under Silverlink...
As RMT reps and activists picketed Elephant & Castle station this morning in support of sacked CSA Jerome Bowes, they were attacked by an enraged passer-by, who delivered some racist abuse and left one rep with a split lip and a face covered in blood before the police took him away.
That's...
You come face-to-face with a particularly gory one-under, suffer from the trauma, go off sick, and what do management do? Call you on your emergency contact number and try to contact you 13 times in your first five days off! Then summon you to a sickness review when you've not been off sick for 28...
The new issue of the printed Tubeworker bulletin is out now.
RMT is balloting station staff on the Rickmansworth group for strike action after management went ahead with issuing displacement notices to five CSAs.
LUL has been threatening to do this since last year, after creating the problem itself by sending a dozen staff 'above numbers' to Ricky group by...
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