TUBE UNION RMT said today that five days of talks at conciliation service ACAS aimed at resolving the dispute over Olympics recognition and reward for all London Underground staff have broken down after LUL attempted to impose even more strings.

Effectively, LU are demanding that staff be prepared to work anytime, anyplace, anywhere at the drop of a hat, even attempting to force staff to work in safety-critical roles in unfamiliar locations that they are not properly trained for, putting passengers at risk as hundreds of thousands of extra Olympics passengers descend on an overcrowded network.

LU have also maintained their position of excluding administrative staff from any agreement and are now attempting to impose additional bans on annual leave.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:

“We don’t know if there has been political interference from behind the scenes but attempting to impose a whole raft of new strings on a tube Olympics agreement at this stage smacks of an attempt from somewhere to sabotage these talks when we had said in good faith that we wanted to move the negotiations forward.

“Management wants the unlimited ability to change working patterns, locations and extend hours at the drop of a hat and to demand that staff take on safety-critical roles in unfamiliar workplaces which they aren’t trained to work in.

“We would be failing both our members and the travelling public if we agreed to working practices outside of existing agreements and procedures that we know are inherently unsafe.

“This dispute will now be put back in front of the RMT executive which will consider our next move.”