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Publication Date: March 23 2009
As news emerged that the number of jobs under threat across the Tube and TfL could reach 3,000, RMT said it would ballot all its members at LUL, including former Metronet staff, as well as in the separate dispute at TfL.
Both ballots will open tomorrow, March 24, and close on Wednesday April 8.
On London Underground, bosses are threatening to tear up an agreement aimed at safeguarding jobs, and has refused to rule out compulsory redundancies.
LUL has also refused to budge from an unacceptable five-year pay offer that gives no real-terms increase for four years, and which could even see pay cut, and there have been so many complaints of breaches of disciplinary and attendance procedures they appear co-ordinated.
TfL is also threatening compulsory redundancies as part of a £2.4 billion cuts package, and has so far failed to table any pay offer at all.
“London Underground seems to think that observing agreements is optional, and its plan to cut jobs is simply unacceptable,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.
“After three months of stonewalling LUL has also tabled what is at best a five-year pay freeze which it knows full well could never be accepted, and its managers appear to have been given the nod to unleash a fresh round of bullying.
“LUL’s own ‘Valuing Time’ study acknowledges that our members’ productivity is at an all-time high, with passenger numbers up to record-breaking levels of four million a day.
“We said from the start that our members, whether in LUL or TfL, would not be made to pay for the failure and greed of bankers and privateers, and that any attempt to impose compulsory redundancies would be met with a ballot for industrial action
“If LUL and TfL want to avoid confrontation they should withdraw their plans to slash jobs and guarantee there will be no forced redundancies, start talking seriously about pay and call off the bully managers,” Bob Crow said.
