Tubeworker's blog

RMT will be protesting against East London line privatisation, just as the line closes for the extension to be built. Get yerselves along there.

Thursday 13th December, 11am
outside City Hall

Of course, it is much better to stop the privatisation than to mourn it. It is a serious setback that...

TubeLines is threatening to close the ERU's Tottenham depot, with staff displaced elsewhere. Not good if you live locally and want to carry on working there!

RMT has declared its intention to oppose this, so let's hope it does - with action if words don't work. After all, this is a small...

Chaos on the Picc yesterday, when a couple of hours' suspension in the early afternoon led to delays well late into the evening, no thanks to management's refusal to implement an emergency timetable.

Spare a thought for the beleagured station staff at Acton Town and Northfields. With half-hour...

Management have a new campaign as part of their relentless drive to persecute the sick. They are targeting the '10% worst attenders'. The unlucky tenth could well find their names emblazoned across office walls, together with little icons plotting how they will be poked and prodded back to work or...

LUL's new catchphrase is that its core value is time.

As we know already, time is money.

Go figure ...

Back in 2004, Workers' Liberty (the group which publishes Tubeworker) produced a pamphlet, Tunnel Vision, which reviewed the fight against the Public-Private Partnership. In it, we included an article called Where next?.

Re-reading it now, it is spookily - and sadly - accurate about London...

Bakerloo line station staff had a treat on Monday - a trip to Wembley Stadium's sumptuous hospitality facilities. Why this luxury day out? So that management could schmooze them about their plans for the transferring Silverlink stations.

Fortunately, staff are perhaps not as naive and...

Tubeworker readers will know that LUL has agreed to delay the implementation of the ticket office cuts and closures until autumn 2008.

But while management may have agreed a delay, they are clearly determined to press ahead with the cuts. It seems that infraco surveyors continue to visit stations...

Last Friday's strike by Bakerloo line detrainment staff was once again solid. But again, fighting alone - and with managers and RCIs doing their duties - it sadly had little effect.

Detrainment staff remain resolute in their determination to stop management imposing lone working, but are asking...

Tubeworker has had cause to comment on many previous occasions about management's somewhat eccentric schemes for reducing SPADs. But this one really takes the biscuit ... or some form of confectionary anyway.

Bakerloo management had some sticks of rock produced, with 'Bakerloo' running through...

Not the footballers' Wives And Girlfriends, but Wide Aisle Gates. They are like Manual Gates, but with a motor rather than a member of staff. Which sounds great - no more of that RSI-inducing arm-ache, and a chance to help the customers more and share out the workload.

But management seem to think...

Apparently, some trains are missing cab coat hooks, and they are not being replaced because depot stores can't afford to buy any.

So all this money has been poured into Metronet for what, precisely?! Perhaps someone could ring the departing Andrew Lezala and ask if he can spare a few of his...

Believe it or not, Metronet's bosses get to slink away from the disaster they created with more than a million quid of public money in their already over-stuffed pockets.

Andrew Lezala and his accolytes have pulled off an incredible smash-and-grab raid.

Tubeworker wonders whether the same...

You will soon be receiving your ballot paper for Section 3 of the TfL Pensions Consultative council election.

Tubeworker strongly urges that you vote for Paul Murphy and Paul O'Brien. As both are RMT activists, they will be more accountable and representative than other candidates, and as members...

East Ham group's new GSM is busy making himself very unpopular with staff. When he's not having managers turn up unannounced on people's doorsteps, he's disciplining staff when they've done nothing wrong.

Staff are getting mightily peed off about this, and are busy planning the fightback ...

'Ere, want one of those security guard jobs on the transferring Silverlink stations? Click here.

Benefits include £7.50 per hour (don't spend it all at once), and a 48-hour working week (don't bother applying if you have a life, then).

Oh, and the positions are "permanent". Rather different from...

Bakerloo line detrainment staff are to strike again on Friday 26th October - postponed from 22nd October following an administrative cock-up by RMT.

Once again, these workers deserve full support and solidarity for their efforts to defeat management's plan to impose lone working. As they have shown...

It seems that many of the Control Room staff at Neasden have been working despite their safety-critical licensing having expired.

Management's explanation is that there has been a failure of the 'systemised management system'. Brilliant: a systemised system. What next? Safe safety? A licence to...

Tubeworker has been saying for a long long time that Station Supervisors ought to be track familiarised. Management's persistent failure to ensure this has led to many incidents of unnecessarily long service disruption and distress to staff.

Well finally, management have agreed to union...

Tip to TubeLines. When replacing a defective position detector on a set of points, make sure that you do not replace it with one that is also defective.

Otherwise, you might get a situation like you did the other day - the north end of the Jubilee line suspended not just once but twice, when...

Ken Livingstone has a habit of trumpeting his commitment to a decent living wage for Tube cleaners. Problem is, they ... er ... don't get a decent living wage. Ken's excuse? He doesn't have the power to impose decent wages on the cowboys who hold the contracts.

So Tubeworker was intrigued to read...

At last month's Labour Party conference, Gordon Brown took away trade unions' (and local Labour Parties') right to submit resolutions to future conferences. Or rather, the unions gave away their rights - voting for Brown's proposal to gag themselves!

Union resolutions in recent years have been...

As part of the impending Silverlink transfer, LUL stations Highbury & Islington, Blackhorse Road and West Brompton are to take on responsibility for the Silverlink platforms. Obviously, then, additional responsibilities would entail extra work, extra insepctions, extra fault reporting - and, you'd...

Note to Buckhurst Hill group management. If one of your staff has a motorbike crash on the way to work, in uniform, and has to be taken to hospital in an ambulance for emergency treatment, then you should offer them sympathy and support - not an attendance warning. Issuing a warning is against...

The Victoria and Metropolitan lines will be closed on Boxing Day for engineering work. Management seem to think this means they can book all the drivers off on annual leave for the day. Problem is: that means you lose an annual day from some other time in the year.

We have little enough control...

Note to occupational health. When you do the sight test for someone who has achieved promotion to driver, let them wear their glasses. After all, they are hardly going to get in the cab and take their specs off, are they?!

Rumour has it that a CSA, having passed all the tests for driver, may...

As well as the impending Silverlink transfer, there's another transfer in the offing - King's Cross Thameslink station is coming over to LUL on 9th December.

But can we trust management to ensure adequate staffing levels? Tubeworker fears not, and management's apparent unwillingness to even discuss...

Literally shocking, as a Bakerloo driver had to go to hospital after getting an electric shock from the Train Ready to Start Plunger in Harrow & Wealdstone Sidings.

Hospital, pah! No need to, erm, take the plunger out of commission, eh? Just keep on using it until we are sure what's wrong. Th...

We think management may be planning to install minibars in drivers' cabs. Stands to reason, since their 'top form' booklet recommends having the following with you in the cab - water, orange juice, coffee or tea, bananas, low-fat low-sugar cereal bars, cheese/tuna/turkey/salmon/peanut butter...