Dear colleague,

TFL: No cuts, no austerity - unity is strength

This morning, your Regional Organiser and London Underground reps met with LU management to discuss the company's response to the government's funding settlement with TfL. At the meeting, London Underground managers invited the unions to work with them on implementing cuts.

RMT was absolutely clear in response. We told them that there was no question of this union colluding in implementing cuts in jobs, pay or terms and conditions.

RMT's position has been clear from the outset. The deal is a disaster. It's another short-term deal with inadequate funding and a tightening net of conditions aimed at imposing austerity on you, the workers who kept London moving during the pandemic. The deal demands a cut in operating costs of around £900 million, a review of service levels, a completely futile review of the potential for driverless trains, and, most scandalously, a review of your pension scheme - a pension scheme that is perfectly sound. TfL has also agreed to freeze pay, though all existing pay awards will be honoured.

This is an open attack on London's transport workers and it must be fought. But the deal is terrible for Londoners more widely too. More cuts to public transport leave us staring at a new Dark Age for the capital's public transport system. In the context of a gathering global climate crisis, the selfish, short-termist recklessness of this government is breathtaking.

Your union will fight any attempt to make our members accept job cuts, pension attacks or any detriment to pay or conditions, wherever it comes from.

That is what we told London Underground's managers today. And I say it to you now: we will not accept the imposition of insane and punitive austerity cuts on a workforce that has done everything asked of it during this national crisis.

We, and London, need a better deal than this.

We will seek to build a broad-based public and political campaign alongside other unions, user and passenger groups and civil society organisations in defence of public transport because we know that London needs its public transport more than ever.

We also need a robust, united and fighting industrial response wherever it proves necessary. RMT will support members in any way possible should they decide to take strike action.

Now, we need to build our strength and ensure we're ready. Now is the time to talk to those of your colleagues who aren't members yet and tell them, the RMT is their voice at work, fighting for transport workers. Encourage them to join here: https://www.rmt.org.uk/about/join-rmt/
Yours sincerely,

Michael Lynch
General Secretary