London Underground is shedding 1,000 jobs, and is considering making compulsory redundancies. Around 70 staff are still under threat of being forcibly sacked.

The company’s action directly breaches our ‘no compulsory redundancies’ agreement. If LUL gets away with breaching this agreement for this group of staff – who are in administrative and management grades – then it will try the same for other staff too. Your job and your grade could be next.

Admin now, other grades next

This time, LUL wants to sack admin staff and managers – so it has come up with a spurious claim that the ‘no compulsory redundancies’ policy does not apply to admin staff and managers. Next time, it may want to sack ticket sellers, or drivers – then it will come up with another spurious claim that the ‘no compulsory redundancies’ policy does not apply to ticket sellers, or drivers.

So RMT’s current dispute is not just about defending the 70 admin staff and managers currently under threat, but about defending every job and every worker on London Underground and TfL.

RMT has calculated that the total financial black hole facing TfL/LUL is pushing £6 billion with 3,000 jobs at risk. This may get even higher with the impending collapse of TubeLines. We have already exposed £60 million of maintenance cuts on former Metronet lines.

How do you think that the company will achieve these financial cuts? By coming for your job, your wages, your conditions.

No grade is safe

• New technology enables ‘driverless trains’.
• LUL is working hard to drive business away from ticket office windows in order to cut ticket office jobs in the near future.
• The company is ‘reviewing’ station staffing levels ie. planning to cut them.
• Service control has already lost jobs through restructuring – more could face the chop.
• LUL/TfL are refusing to fill vacancies – for example, in revenue control and on stations – as a precursor to scrapping these jobs.
• TfL has an ‘Organisational Change Process’ which could see thousands of jobs cut across all departments.
• If LUL breaks this agreement, it will break others too – then any of us could find ourselves stripped of our rights, or sacked for the smallest error.

The best way to defend these jobs is to defend the ‘Jobs for Life’ deal now. If we wait for each round of job cuts, then we will be divided and weak. When it comes round to your job and your grade, there may be no-one left to fight for you.

Just talking isn’t working

RMT has held many meetings over many months with management trying to get them to abide by their own agreement. We have talked to management face-to-face and through ACAS. They simply refuse to accept that words mean what they say.

London Underground Ltd has ignored straightforward words, ignored your union’s clearly-argued case, and has even ignored former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s confirmation that the ‘Jobs for Life’ deal applies to all staff.

Experience tells us that only industrial action makes them listen.