Why RMT members on London Underground are striking

August 2022

Why RMT members on London Underground are striking

Why RMT is taking more strike action on the Underground As you may know, the RMT has called industrial action on London Underground. This action is not taken lightly. It is being taken to stop job cuts and attacks on workers’ employment conditions and pensions which threaten to permanently degrade and damage London’s Underground network.

From heroic keyworkers to a cost to be cut London Underground directly employs more than 17,000 staff as drivers, station staff, fleet and track maintenance workers. These people are transport keyworkers providing essential mass transit to a global megacity of more than 9 million people.

They continued to go into work on the Tube throughout the pandemic, helping to keep essential services running, when others have been able to work more safely from home.

At the height of the first COVID-19 outbreak, a third of London Underground staff were ill, self-isolating or shielding. Some died. Since the pandemic began, 3 in 4 Underground workers have experienced violence in the workplace as tensions, crime and anti-social behaviour have risen on the Tube. These people have earned warm praise from the Prince of Wales, from the Mayor and even the government. Now, thanks to a financial crisis at TfL which has been deliberately engineered by the government to generate cuts, these hard-working staff are facing attacks on their jobs, pay, pensions and working conditions.

London Underground’s damaging proposals London Underground managers are imposing the deletion of 600 station staff jobs from stations. Customer Service Assistant roles will be deleted from London Underground’s staffing complement. At Heathrow, Kings Cross, Euston, Victoria and Green Park for example, this will mean the loss of between 25 and 40% of these jobs. Vacancies are going unfilled across LU, in stations, maintenance and engineering.

Across TfL, according to its own data, an average of 160 Full Time Equivalent staff are leaving roughly every month.

London Underground like to say that no one is being made redundant, but this is not the point. London Underground is attempting to permanently reduce its staffing complement, leaving the remaining staff to cover more work.

In addition, London Underground seeks to impose new working patterns that it says ‘maximise flexibility’ by giving managers more power to change shift times and locations, sweating their remaining staff harder.

This is a direct attack on agreements that specifically seek to defend work-life balance and ensure that staff don’t become fatigued. Driving up workloads, lengthening shifts and increasing unsocial hours working for safety-critical staff is highly dangerous and counter-productive.

Furthermore, TfL has not ruled out resuming its attacks on the pension scheme.

TfL’s pension scheme is currently in excellent financial condition and TfL’s agenda is purely about cutting its own contributions.

Driving the decline of the Tube Transport for London knows that London Underground is doing the wrong thing.

Ridership on the Tube has recovered but is averaging around 75% of pre-Covid levels. 

Reports to the TfL Board have stressed that winning back passengers will require the Tube to be properly staffed. Rebuilding ridership will require more visible cleaning and ‘a safe, reliable and frequent service with real-time information and staff available when they are needed.’



Yet 160 Full-Time Equivalent staff are leaving TfL every month, 600 station staff jobs are being cut and the levels of passenger happiness with the availability and help received from staff are falling.1



There is a growing problem with anti-social behaviour and crime on the Underground which is having a scarring effect on passenger confidence.

According to TfL’s data, 1 in 3 passengers have reported that they are worried using public transport as a consequence of an incident. 9% reported that they have been deterred from using public transport as a result of an incident. 2

1

https://board.tfl.gov.uk/documents/g678/Public%20reports%20pack %20Wednesday%2008-Jun-2022%2010.00%20Board.pdf?T=10 – Finance Report p. 6; See also the reports to the Customer Service and Operational Performance panel – March 2022 2 Part-1-Item17-Finance-and-Policy-Committee-Report-230113 (tfl.gov.uk); (Public Pack)Agenda Document for Customer Service and Operational Performance Panel, 07/12/2021 10:00 (tfl.gov.uk) 2



Cuts to safety inspections regimes and maintenance work have truly frightening potential consequences. The transport industry has been here before in the 1990s and it ended in appalling tragedy and mass loss of life.

Negotiated settlement is possible – but only if LU negotiate RMT has been seeking assurances that London Underground would shelve its plans to cut station staff jobs, withdraw its threats to existing agreements and commit to not attacking the TfL pension scheme. London Underground has consistently refused to do this.

The union has met several times under the auspices of ACAS. At our most recent meeting, it became clear that London Underground managers were unwilling to move on their determination to impose cuts to station staff jobs and changes to agreements on working conditions. In fact, they went further and said that they were not authorised to compromise.

Negotiated settlement is possible but it requires both sides to be willing to negotiate and not just meet up for PR purposes.

If London is to make an environmentally sustainable recovery from the pandemic, we need London’s fantastic Underground system to be properly staffed, not subjected to a managed decline that will make it less reliable and less safe.

We ask that you contact the Mayor and ask him to instruct his managers to negotiate a settlement with the RMT.

3