RMT Policy Briefing - London Underground strike

25 February 2022

Why RMT members on London Underground are taking strike action Introduction On 1st and 3rd March, RMT members who work for London Underground will begin two 24 hours strikes as part of their attempt to defend jobs, working conditions and pensions.

This briefing note explains why they have been forced to take this step.

London’s Underground keyworkers and the Covid pandemic "Thanks for doing so much, thanks for all your hard work, I don't know how you do it." 1 Prince Charles to London Underground staff, 1st July, 2020 “Your members have been True Heroes” Grant Shapps MP, Secretary of State for Transport, letter to RMT, May 2020”

“It is absolutely heart-breaking that public transport workers, including TfL staff and contractors, have lost their lives to COVID-19. It is a tragic reminder that they are key workers who have gone above and beyond to help save lives. We owe them all an enormous debt of gratitude. Sadiq Khan, 21 May 2020.

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

At the height of the first outbreak, a third of London Underground staff were ill, selfisolating 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.2 These people have earned warm praise from the Prince of Wales, from the Mayor and 1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53268303 2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59205385

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 heroes are facing attacks on their jobs, pay, pensions and working conditions. These cuts are not only a shameful betrayal of keyworkers, they also threaten the safety and the very future of the Tube in London at a time when we desperately to encourage mass use of safe, clean and sustainable public transport.

Talks at ACAS end in deadlock Late last year, RMT wrote to London Underground’s management asking for assurances that the government’s cuts agenda would not result in cuts to jobs, changes to agreements that protect working conditions and detriment to pensions on the Tube.

London Underground’s management would not give these assurances and RMT members voted in overwhelming numbers to take industrial action in defence of the Tube.

On 23rd February, RMT met London Underground managers to explore the potential for resolving the dispute. RMT once again asked whether London Underground managers could give written assurances that the TfL pension scheme would not be ‘reformed’. The union also asked London Underground to shelve its plans to permanently reduce station staffing by deleting 600 jobs.

London Underground managers said they were unable to give any such assurances and focused instead on their need to deliver cuts as part of the Mayor’s commitments to the government. This is why RMT’s strikes have to take place.

The TfL pension scheme is under a completely unnecessary and politically motivated attack “I’ve made it clear that the Government’s approach to try to rush through reforms is wrong and ill-judged when our transport key workers have done so much to keep our city moving during the pandemic. The Tory plans risk unnecessary industrial action, which would be extremely costly to our city’s economy and entirely of the Tories’ own making.“ Sadiq Khan, 1st June 20213 In June 2020, the government announced that KPMG would conduct a review of TfL and how to make it ‘financially sustainable’ after fare levels plummeted. KPMG’s report remains hidden and the government refuses to publish it. In July that year, Sadiq Khan commissioned his own ‘Independent Review’ to make its own suggestions for returning to sustainability. This Independent Review described the TfL pension scheme as ‘expensive’, ‘unreformed’, ‘outdated’ and too generous to employees. It said that by reforming the scheme, TfL could save £100 million per annum and it recommended TfL set up a review. 4 In its ‘Financial Sustainability Plan’, submitted to the government in January 2021, TfL echoed these lines, describing the scheme as ‘diverging’ from other pension schemes, and 3 Sadiq Khan, Briefing, 1st June 2021. See also the Mayor’s letter to Grant Shapps of 27th May 2021: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mayor_to_transport_secretary_27_may.pdf 4 https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-independent-panel-review-december-2020.pdf, p. 31.

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claiming that its costs were increasing and its funding deficit had deteriorated. It also recommended a review of the scheme. At the same time, the Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey was regularly attacking TfL’s supposedly ‘gold-plated’ pensions. In June 2021, as part of his deal with the government, Sadiq Khan announced a review of the pension scheme. A cosy consensus has emerged that this is an opportunity to reduce employers’ pension contributions.

But the awkward truth is that there is no financial problem with the TfL pension scheme.

It has moved out of deficit and is currently more than 100% funded, which the March 2022 valuation is very likely to confirm. Yet, in a measure of just how cynical and opportunistic this attack is, the government has called for the review to report in its recommendations before the valuation is complete.

RMT believes that the dirty truth is that heroic keyworkers’ pensions are being offered up as a bargaining chip because TfL know that the Conservatives dislike the pension scheme and they believe they can look as though they are making serious cuts by reforming it.

Sadiq Khan has claimed that he opposes reform to the pension scheme and has set out good reasons why it shouldn’t happen. But so far, he’s done nothing in practice to stop it.

London Underground job cutting and restructure In December 2021, London Underground announced that between 500 and 600 station staff jobs are set to be axed under a plan which involves TfL not filling current vacancies or replacing staff when they leave, permanently running down the complement of station staff. At ACAS, RMT asked LU management to stop this process, but they refused, saying they were now moving to implement these cuts regardless of our objections.

This followed closely on from London Underground’s decision to delete 200 Night Tube posts and force through changes to agreements meaning that drivers would be required to do night tube shifts.

Similar processes are taking place in engineering and track maintenance. Vacancies are not being filled and there is pressure to use more casualised and agency labour.

Workloads are rising as London Underground tries to do more with less and there is pressure to reduce safety critical inspection and maintenance work on track and signals.

RMT believes this is the beginning of a wider attack on our members’ pay, jobs and working conditions that will see jobs cut, workloads rise and more casualisation of work.

London Underground’s management are signalling their intention to run down staffing in crucial areas of the Tube and to change agreements governing working conditions that have been negotiated over decades. Crucially, they have signalled that they are prepared to do it without agreement from unions. If this is the case, RMT has little choice but industrial action to protect its members.

A disaster for passengers, heralding the decline of the Tube Transport for London and London Underground know that these attacks are a terrible gamble with the safety of passengers and the future of the Tube.

TfL’s own research, mirroring that of Transport Focus, shows that staff are crucial to

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passenger safety and confidence and will be essential to rebuilding ridership on the Underground. TfL’s Customer Service and Operational Performance panel meeting in November 2020 heard that any recovery plan has to include ‘ensuring and promoting cleanliness, better station and crowd management, as well as lots of emphasis on the visibility of staff.’5 TfL’s own research also shows that 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. 6 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.

A disaster for London and the UK There is nothing ‘managed’ about this decline. These cuts will begin an uncontrollable spiral of decline on the Underground as passenger safety and confidence are eroded, further affecting finances, leading to higher fare prices and more cuts to services which drive yet more people onto the roads. Britain needs the London Underground. It needs more people using mass sustainable public transport. These cuts will make Tube travel more risky, less attractive, less accessible and more expensive. The decline of the Tube will generate more congestion in London’s streets and throw more pollution into its air, creating more dangerous roads and more health problems for the population. It is not just our members that are under attack, it is the future of the Underground as a safe, high quality mass transit system that supports the British economy, helps us decarbonise our transport system and binds together London’s growing population.

What you can do to help: All that RMT is asking is that London Underground agree not to cut jobs, not to change the agreements that cover Underground workers’ working conditions and that the TfL pension scheme is left unchanged. Although the financial crisis is being engineered from Whitehall, the Mayor of London is in charge of Transport for London and he can stop these attacks on the Underground.

We ask that you contact the Mayor and ask him to stand by his staff and his words. He knows these cuts are wrong. Please write to the Mayor and ask him to instruct London Undergrounds management to agree to the RMT’s call for assurances on jobs, agreements and pensions.

5 https://content.tfl.gov.uk/csopp-20201118-draft-public-pack-update-for-web.pdf 6 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) 4