By James Wong McSweeney, RMT Regional Young Members' Officer:

On Wednesday 15th December at 10am a delegation from the RMT will present hundreds of signed postcards from passengers across London to the Mayor, Boris Johnson, calling for an end to the threatened jobs massacre. As part of this a protest has been called to raise awareness of what the reality of the jobs massacre will be and to call for the re-instatement of the three victimised reps: Arwyn Thomas; Eamonn Lynch; and Peter Hartshorn.

This protest has been directly inspired by the student protesters who demonstrated against tuition fees on the 10th November and again on the 24th November. The cuts happening on London Underground are part and parcel of the cuts happening to the London Fire Brigade, the staggering increase in tuition fees and the threatened privatisation of Royal Mail.

We call on all trade unionists, students and everyone opposing the cuts, not just in London Underground, but throughout wider society to join us on Wednesday 15th to show the Tories and their Lib-Dem lapdogs that the cuts won’t happen without a fight.

James Wong-McSweeney, RMT London Young Members' Officer (Personal capacity)

P.S. This will be a 100% peaceful protest, unless of course the police turn up.

No to job cuts and yes to fully staffed stations!

London Underground management are currently trying to get rid of around 800 gateline and ticket office jobs. These planned job cuts are just one small part of a larger plan to get rid of more than 5000 positions in stations, on the trains and in maintenance following the huge meltdowns of Metronet and Tubelines, which were, pre-privatisation, the maintenance departments of London Underground.

The current plan to get rid of 800 jobs will mean ticket offices will open later, close earlier and be even busier than they are now, e.g. Temple station ticket office is to go from roughly 12 hours to just two. On the east end of the District line there are plans for one supervisor, one ticket seller and NO gateline staff for the majority of the day.

Management’s feeble excuse for the cuts are that because of the introduction of Oyster cards less people are buying tickets from the ticket offices. The obviousness of this lie is shown by the fact that the number of tickets a ticket office must sell to be considered viable has been doubled from 15/hour to 30/hour. Even if it was true that less tickets are being sold ticket office staff do a lot more than just sell tickets: they give ticket and travel advice to passengers; help sort out the frequent problems with Oyster cards; and take care of the ticket machines.

The RMT have offered to go into binding arbitration at ACAS over Management's reasoning for why they need to shut ticket offices. Management have, surprise surprise, refused the offer. Management have also victimised three RMT reps: Eamonn Lynch, Bakerloo Line Driver; Arwyn Thomas, Northern Line Driver; and Peter Hartshorn, Green Park Group. Despite all of this the strikes have not only held strong but have been getting stronger. But to win this dispute the RMT needs the support not only of the other London Underground unions, TSSA and ASLEF, but of the unions throught London.