Tube pay: a small shift by bosses

LUL sent a new offer for 2024-5 pay and conditions to our unions on Tuesday 22 October. The full text of the offer is in wide circulation; if you haven’t seen a copy, speak to a rep. Naturally, there's widespread discussion about whether we should continue with the strikes planned for November (1-8 November for RMT, 7 and 12 for Aslef).

There are two main differences from what was on the table before we called strikes. One is a commitment to convene a forum to discuss a “roadmap towards a restructured working week”. But “restructured” does not mean “reduced”. “Restructuring” our existing hours into a four-day week would not satsify either unions’ demand for a 32-hour week.
The company has also said it has “no intention” to move roles within LUL that are currently not on banded pay onto a banded pay model — i.e., it will not be moving forward with plans to reorganise our roles into “job families” with banded pay.

That latter commitment is significant, as it represents, at the very least, a postponement of what would have been a massive attack on collective bargaining that could have driven down pay rates for many workers. But let’s remember that the bosses always posed that as something they planned for LUL in the future, not something that would be imposed as part of this pay round.

There is no movement whatsoever on the basic financial element of the pay deal. LUL claims they are “at the limit” of what they can offer.

But they would say that, wouldn’t they? As far as Tubeworker is concerned, negotiations only really begin in earnest once we call strikes. Up until that point, the bosses aren’t under significant pressure. So this is, in effect, their first offer under the pressure of strikes. And it’s rarely good sense in a negotiation to accept the other side’s first offer.

The pay offer is for a 3.8% increase plus a £450 consolidated flat-rate for any worker on more than £40k/year, or a £1,970 flat-rate increase for those on less than £40k. That means the range of increases to basic salary is between 4.2% for the highest paid and 7.6% for the lowest-paid.

It’s right that lower-paid workers should benefit most. Tubeworker has argued consistently for flat-rate pay awards in order to achieve this. This deal would represent an above-inflation increase for some grades (e.g., CSA2), but not for everyone. And a below-inflation “increase” is a real-terms pay cut. Higher-paid grades might be better able to absorb that, but we shouldn’t simply roll over and accept it. We’ve got strikes named: those strikes should remain on to see if we can force further concessions from the company, on pay and other demands.

WE NEED TO USE OUR POWER

Striking is always a “risk”, on some level. It’s possible we’ll take our action and LUL still won’t budge. We’ll then have to decide whether to give up, or go again, with escalated action. But Tubeworker believes that’s a risk worth taking. But even if our strikes only succeed in nudging up the offer by 1%, they’ll have paid for themselves.

Apart from the Engineering Vehicle Operators who were the vanguard of the planned week of action in January, and who were already out on strike when the mayor found the extra £30 million, there have been no strikes on LUL since March 2023. Whilst we shouldn’t strike “just for the sake of it”, it’s important to remind the bosses, and ourselves, of the power we have to shut down the job.

The £30 million allowed for a significant improvement to the 2023-4 pay deal. This year, let’s see if the company’s claim that it is “at the limit” of what it can afford can survive a potential week-long shut down of the job. As good as winning the £30 million was, that settlement was still a below-inflation increase for many grades. To follow that up with another below-inflation increase, without even having taken a single day’s action to try to win more, would set a worrying precendent. It would train members to see calling strikes as an idle threat, rather than a collective decision to take direct action, that we follow through on unless the bosses meet our demands.

Keep the strikes on!