Pay, hours, conditions

Station staff on London Underground’s Bakerloo Line South Group, which includes Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, Charing Cross, Lambeth North, and Elephant and Castle, have voted by 88% for strikes against short-staffing. Tube union RMT has announced strikes for 26 December and 14 January. RMT has also declared victory in the “battle of Baker Street”, after London Underground reinstated an unjustly sacked station worker, and trumped-up disciplinary charges against another were dropped. Tube bosses were forced to back down after 41 out of 61 workers balloted at the station voted for strikes...

The striking dinner ladies at Ladywood school in Grimethorpe returned to work on 29 November, claiming victory in their fight to defend their jobs. The school proposed to make all nine of the school meals supervisors redundant as part of a cost-cutting exercise announced in June. Backed by their union, Unison, the women decided to fight back and voted to take extensive strike action to save their jobs. Starting in September they took a hugely impressive 36 days of strike action. For most of that time there was little or no sign of movement from the employer, but the women remained determined...

Train drivers on London Underground’s Central Line will strike again over 21-22 December, to demand the reinstatement of unjustly sacked colleague Paul Bailey. Paul was sacked after passing a random drugs test. Although he registered for the presence of cannabinoid substances, due to taking hemp supplements, he was within the “cut off limit” of 50ng/ml. The RMT union says Paul’s sacking “undermines the integrity of London Underground’s entire drugs and alcohol testing regime”. Company management seems to be worried the union might be right; they recently issued guidance to staff not to take...

Glasgow City Council Labour Group leader Frank McAveety has issued a letter which supposedly puts the record straight about the history of the City Council’s long-running equal pay dispute. In fact, it does no such thing. The letter begins by listing “some spectacular things” achieved by Labour administrations during their 40 years in power in the City Chambers. It does not do so for the sake of accuracy – many Labour Party members will have a less positive assessment of the record of the City Council Labour administrations – but for the purpose of creating a narrative: We, Labour, did a...

Workers at various London Underground stations are balloting for strikes in a variety of disputes. At Baker Street, workers are preparing to ballot to demand the reinstatement of CSA Mahoney, sacked after an outrageous abuse of the probation process. They are also demanding unnecessary disciplinary procedures against two workers, including the local RMT rep, be dropped. On the Bakerloo South stations group RMT is preparing to ballot members for strikes against short staffing. The situation is now so acute that station staff report sometimes having to work on Oxford Circus’s busy exit gateline...

Security staff at the University of Leicester are currently in dispute with management, who wish to cut their working week to 35 from 37 hours, with the loss of two hours’ pay. Effectively this works out to be about £800 per year. A large sum for relatively low paid workers but a tiny sum for the university, especially when the team they are targeting is very small. A consultative ballot was held last week where 100% turnout achieved 100% in favour of industrial action. This, from the 100% unionised team, should send a very clear message to the bosses that a cut in wages will not be tolerated...

Pay volatility is much greater than has previously been assumed, with the vast majority of workers in stable jobs experiencing significant month-to-month changes in pay. Low pay comes with spikes. A recent report by the Resolution Foundation looks at month-to-month changes for workers in stable employment. Previous research has only looked at how workers’ pay varies year-to-year. The better paid (those earning more that £35,000 take home) see their pay fluctuating month-to-month, but for them it’s mostly a matter of months where they get something extra (a bonus, commission or overtime). The...

Two train drivers talked with Solidarity about the latest in the long-running Driver Only Operation dispute, where the RMT union is taking action against threats to guards’ jobs. As far as we know, the Merseyrail offer is not final. We’re not even sure why it’s been publicly released. Negotiations are still ongoing. The ACAS process was supposed to be confidential, and this breaches that. I wouldn’t vote for the offer. It accepts a three-year pay freeze for guards, and makes cleaners redundant (though it promises no compulsory redundancies), in order to finance retaining the guard as a safety...

Up to 8,000 Glasgow City Council workers, members of the GMB and Unison, took part in last week’s two-day equal pay strike. For 48 hours only emergency cover was available in home care services. Primary schools and nursery schools were closed. Secondary schools were open, but without a school-meals service. Workers in Glasgow’s four refuse and recycling centres refused to cross picket lines, bringing refuse collection to a halt for the duration of the strike. Some parking attendants and museum and libraries staff also refused to cross picket lines. The strike – the largest equal pay strike in...

GMB and Unison picket lines covered Glasgow on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 October in a two-day strike by City Council employees. A lunchtime demonstration on the first day of the strike also saw four thousand people march through Glasgow to a rally in front of the City Chambers. It was the biggest strike for equal pay in British history. The target was years of pay discrimination against City Council women employees, resulting from the Workforce Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR) which was introduced and defended by successive Labour administrations The then Labour-controlled Council rejected the...