Tubeworker online meeting, 15 February, 3pm: The fight for in-house employment

📢 Tubeworker public (Zoom) meeting

Thursday 15 February, 15:00-17:00

Log in via Zoom here.

Thousands of workers across London Underground and TfL are outsourced, meaning they are not employed directly by LUL or TfL but by private contractors. The biggest outsourced contract is cleaning, with private company ABM employing over 2,000 cleaners across the network. Catering, security, and track protection work are also major outsourced areas.

Invariably, outsourced workers have worse conditions and fewer rights than directly-employed workmates. Outsourced workers often include a higher proportion of black, brown, and migrant workers than the directly-employed workforce, representing a form of systemic racial discrimination.

Outsourced workers have won victories through taking action. In 2007-9, campaigns of direct action, including strikes, by Tube cleaners won an agreement that LUL and TfL would include a clause in the outsourced cleaning contract tying cleaners' pay to the London Living Wage. In 2020-1, RMT campaigning staved off the threat of compulsory redundancies on the Sodexo catering contract. Since May 2023, 5,800 outsourced workers have had a staff travel pass for the first time, the result of years of campaigning by the RMT. Outsourced track protection workers in the RMT are currently campaigning for improved conditions and direct employment.

But our unions could do more to empower outsourced workers and help them fight. This meeting will discuss the struggles faced by outsourced workers across the Tube, and talk about the kind of campaign we need to fight for in-house employment.

Speakers include cleaner activists, activists from RMT LUL Engineering branch involved in the track protection workers' campaign, and more TBC.