Following the removal of 800 station staff posts by the company last year, I write to advise you that London Underground is to recruit another 600 Customer Service Advisors (CSA’s), coming on top of the 300 employed earlier this year. The company has been forced into this massive u-turn, and has now increased the number of jobs by 100, after savage cuts within the last year.

This recruitment is an outright admission that London Underground got their station staffing cuts programme wrong and were warned repeatedly that the job cuts programme would come back to haunt them. This without a doubt has caused embarrassment to the company and proves that the axing of station staff has been a massive blunder that has left stations unstaffed, created safety problems and clearly led to disruption from the moment it was introduced .The travelling public who use the tube have time after time expressed their wish to have booking offices open, a staff presence in stations to offer assistance and make them feel safe and secure when travelling, especially in quiet periods during the day and at night.

Staffing levels are already at a critical point and your union is committed and determined to oppose any future finance-driven piecemeal cuts and fight for the long term future of a safe and secure tube system. RMT still remains deeply concerned that the legacy of this whole botched staffing cuts process will be a shortage of trained, safety-critical staff to cope with the massive pressure that will be thrown at the Underground system throughout the Olympics period