RMT General Grades Committee decision:

We note with great concern the report from our Regional Organiser and representatives that London Underground has imposed a change to the rules and procedures for station access, removing responsibility and control from Station Supervisors for allowing access for people working on stations.

We strongly oppose this reduction in the responsibility of Station Supervisors for the running of their stations. This compromises the ability of Stations Supervisors to ensure safe and effective working and to protect security by ensuring that only authorised staff are allowed access to the London Underground system. We agree with our representatives that this devalues the job, and note that this follows LUL’s imposition of a new Rule Book in 2007 which removed several important responsibilities from Station Supervisors. Further, LU’s repeated statements that stations will be staffed “when they are open” leads us to believe that the company intends to remove Station Supervisors from at least some stations during night-time engineering hours, with the loss of many jobs.

We believe that this also affects our members who book on to carry out work on stations. Under the new procedures, members could find themselves being “booked on” for work by someone on the end of a phone who does not know or understand the site-specific circumstances that may make access problematic and may not be able to provide the protection required. And if LUL does remove Station Supervisors from many stations during engineering hours, this will leave our members working on these stations without the protection that the presence of a Station Supervisor gives them.

Unfortunately, the Office of Rail Regulation has refused to take action to prevent LUL making these changes, proving itself ineffective in protecting safety standards.

We therefore instruct the General Secretary to:
1. write to LUL stating our opposition to this and requesting an urgent meeting
2. convene a meeting of our Level 2 and Tier 2 Stations and Revenue representatives, Chair and Secretary of our Regional Council’s Stations and Revenue grades committee, and appropriate representatives of our engineering and cleaning grades, to discuss this issue and plan a campaign of action
3. publicise the importance of Station Supervisors controlling access to stations, including publicising incidents that illustrate this
4. work with our Regional Council’s Stations and Revenue grades committee to facilitate a recruitment and organising drive aimed specifically at Station Supervisors.

We rename this file CHANGES TO CONTROL OVER STATION ACCESS – STATION SUPERVISORS – LONDON UNDERGROUND.

London Transport Regional Council and branches to be advised.