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Every Journey Matters, but Not Every job

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It is an indication of the way things are that the most important issue in this SFC News is about something management will not discuss at Functional Council.
Once again we have asked LU to come clean and tell members what their plans are for our stations. Vauxhall has now been added to the list of stations that will be refurbished and re-opened without a ticket office. Management refuse to say which other stations, or even how many will lose their ticket offices.
We also know that LU is carrying out, what it calls, a “Stations Processes Review”. RMT does not accept the legitimacy of this review, which has involved a small number of managers observing occasional duties at just five stations. From this, the company will identify processes that could be taken away from the supervisor, which will, in turn, help to justify arguments for mobile supervisors.
The stations processes review ties in with Phase 2 of “Every Journey Matters”. The company is asking its employees to suggest ways in which we can change the way we work. The best way for the company to engage with us would be to give their proposals to the unions now, so that your elected trade union reps can start consulting and negotiating to protect our job security and conditions.
Instead, the company is using things like every journey matters to avoid a real discussion with the unions. There is a real danger that staff suggestions will be cherry picked and those that can be used to justify cutting jobs will be latched onto as a justification for the plans they had all along. The best answer to questions about how LU can improve is to consult the RMT!

Rest Day & Long Weekend Rosters
A couple of recent referrals have highlighted cases where local management have either refused to implement, or have withdrawn, Rest Day or Long Weekend Rosters for reserve staff.
The framework agreement does not require management to implement such arrangements but we do have agreement, at SFC, that where a majority of staff are in favour of rest day or Long Weekend Rosters then managers should only refuse this where there are legitimate business reasons not to.
This means it is not acceptable for a GSM to simply refuse a roster. There must be a proper examination of any objections before a decision to refuse is taken.
RMT believes that rest day and long weekend rosters can help local groups to plan their coverage and should not prevent the efficient allocation of reserve staff.

Wave & Pay
Management plans to introduce a trial of Wave & Pay in November. Details of the trial should be known after the next Revenue Forum on 4 July but we have already been told that wave and pay bank cards will not cap like Oyster cards.
RMT asked for this trial to be postponed as we have not yet had a full discussion about Wave & Pay at SFC and the failure of wave & Pay cards to cap will cause confusion and lead to conflict between over-charged passengers and staff.
It is bad enough having to explain the different costs of paper tickets – peak and off peak; and Oyster - Peak, off-peak and reduced rate. Now we will have to add a sixth scale of charges for wave & Pay.

Abuse of Disciplinary Process
We continue to hear about management imposing wholly unjustified sanctions on members and investigations that ride roughshod over the procedures set out in LU’s own policy.
We will work with the local reps to challenge these abuses and are monitoring the situation. Our response to these abuses needs to be discussed in every branch.