The legacy of "Ambassadors" on stations

Picture shows an appeal for Ambassadors to sign up for shifts in 2016. This was during an overtime ban by station staff in the RMT.

For many years now, LUL has allowed "Ambassadors" to work on stations during busy events.

These are usually TfL office staff given a crash training course and a nominal "iCSA" license, and often paid bonuses for their shifts that outstrip what substantive CSAs would earn. As well as working at events, they sometimes lend a helping hand during strike days.

The Special Requirements Team (SRT), a department of station staff set up specifically to provide an additional staffing resource for events and projects, has been particularly impacted and undermined by the spread of the Ambassador scheme. Ambassadors now sometimes outnumber SRT staff at some events. It's become an upsetting indictment on our failure as a union to destroy its incursion from the get go.

As with other ways in which the company has chipped away at standards on the job, like reducing refresher training from a five-day course to a tick-box, multiple-choice quiz, and familiarisations becoming token exercises, the spread of the Ambassador scheme is an indication of battles we've lost — or perhaps, that we failed to fight.

We've got cosplayers turning up as if they're going to Wimbledon with a hi-vis vest. While in the same room, overzealous managers are pulling SRT staff up for not having their name badge on their outer jacket.

We've had Ambassadors doing platform work such as SATS in jeans and trainers, whilst the fact that they only have basic training means they aren't able to help with many customer enquiries anyway, meaning the CSAs around them end up having to pick up the slack anyway.

We understand many who sign up for the Ambassador scheme are well meaning, looking for a way to "help out" and get some hands-on experience of the operational side of the system. But if LUL acknowledges a need for this additional staffing resource, it should be met by creating more jobs on stations, which anyone who wanted could then apply for.