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GSMs on the line: Who is in charge?

GSM Simon Jones (Charing Cross) and GSM Stacey McManus (Wembley Central) have virtually no experience of operating in our industry and their management of both groups over the last year goes a long way in proving their incompetence. Performance manager Dave Proffit appears to have far too much involvement on all the groups and many staff members and reps are of the opinion that the GSM's don't lead their groups its Dave Proffit. It would be nice if one of these GSM's actually took a stance and challenged Proffit but look what happened to old GSM Barry Grant (moved out to Ricky after putting in a grievance against Proffit).

Proffit has been sending out 'love letters' recently accusing reps of inappropriate use of email but after dragging them to meetings to informally discuss these emails he produces no proof and the meeting is a sham. His tactics appear to be those of intimidation and bullying of our reps and activists but fortunately we are a solid bunch on the Bakerloo and people like Proffit are chancers and are trying to push their luck. Reps response 'jog on' Proffit stop getting us in on these spurious charges and do some proper work!

Reports from the level 1 meeting by the local rep at Charing Cross are almost embarrassing in their content. LUL hold energy saving awards once a year for the groups and stations that have reduced their electricity consumption the most and in the past 8 tickets were distributed to the groups so that staff could attend the free food and drink ceremony (shame that they can't do this at Christmas).

It was agreed at a previous level 1 that the tickets would be given out on a lottery basis to stop the same old cronies (management pets) going each time.

This year the department who organise this event cut attendance down by 50% so only gave out 4 tickets which were already named. The local rep had the argument at level 1 about breaching level 1 agreements and how did they get the names for the people whose names are on the tickets? Etc. After a brief debate the rep said he would refer the matter to functional at which point the GSM lost the plot stating that the rep couldn't do that and there's no need to be unreasonable can't we sort out at local level ( the usual shit).

The rep said he would refer it regardless but after the meeting our RMT rep on the group was called into the GSM's office for a quiet word. The conversation went along these lines "Could you please hold the referral back for two months as I am here on the group as a GSM development and part of that development is to not have any referrals in the first year?" Obviously the rep was dumbfounded firstly by the naivety of the manager to reveal this and secondly by the pure selfishness of the man who is more worried about furthering his career than the staff he supposedly manages. Outcome the referral went in the next day.

On the Wembley central group GSM McManus has been distorting the truth in silver link joint working parties by stating facts about staff being developed to help them achieve supervisor status. Out of last years dispute traffic hours supervision should have been on the group by now but LUL have dragged their heals over getting the existing staff assessed and trained even trying to lower their pay rates by pushing for a lower supervisor grade.

Ms McManus constantly ignores requests from local reps for meeting and doesn't show the slightest bit of courtesy by responding to emails. Her back ground from silverlink is a real eye opener in how the privateers treat their staff and we need to show her that her behaviour has no place on the underground.

All of this said though it is apparent that three of the GSM's and possibly the fourth have not got any say in how their groups run it all comes from Mien Fuhrer Proffit!