London Underground held a special meeting of its Comapny Council yesterday to discuss management's job-cutting plans. Steve Hedley, Janine Booth and Roy Carey attended on behalf of RMT. Here is a report of the discussions ...

CONSULTATION WITH THE UNIONS

RMT complained that there had been no meaningful consultation with the unions so far. We could have no faith in the 'consultation' when managers are already talking to staff about the changes as though they are definitely going to happen. TSSA said that they did not accept the Terms of Reference set out by management. ASLEF agreed.

Management asserted that there were two separate agreements, one covering operational staff, another covering management and admin. The unions rejected this.

RMT said that for the consultation to be genuine, the company should suspend implementation of its plans while talks continued. Management refused.

There will be a Joint Working Party to look at the details of the proposals. Management proposed that there be two representatives from each union on this JWP. RMT argued that we needed more than this in order to represent the range of grades within our membership.

The Company Council will meet again next Thursday morning.

TRAIN STAFF

ASLEF said to management, "You say train staff are not affected. We say train staff are affected."

COMPULSORY REDUNDANCIES?

Management said that they "do not intend to make anyone compulsorily redundant". However, they insisted that only operational staff, not managers and admin, are covered by the "no compulsory redundancies" agreement, despite that agreement stating very clearly that it applies to "all employees".

WHY THIS JOB-CUTTING 'RE-ORGANISATION'?

Asked to specify the reasons for their plan to cut 7-800 jobs, management replied that there are three reasons: 1. The Jubilee Line upgrade not being delivered on time. 2. At the end of the year, LU wil be short of revenue income. 3. The ticketing world has changed.

RMT replied:

1. The PPP Arbiter has ruled that the delay to the upgrade is Tube Lines' fault (details here). By giving this as a reason for the job cuts, LU management is therefore admitting that it is cutting station staff jobs because of a private contractor's foul-ups. This is a disgrace.

2. We believe that there are other ways of saving the money (see below).

3. The reduction in ticket office window transactions is partly because LU has deliberately driven custom away (management willingly admitted this). Changes in ticket-buying behaviour does not automatically imply staffing cuts. Oyster is not as simple to use as management make out: customers still need a lot of help. Open ticket offices have an assistance and reassurance role. SAMFs are multi-functional.

OPEN THE BOOKS!

RMT demanded that London Underground open up its financial information for the unions to scrutinise so that we can identify alternative savings. We asked for the cost of: - Valuing Time - money paid out in Employment Tribunal settlements - the use of consultants, temporary staff and contractors - senior managers' expenses

Management said that they would get back to us about this, but that a lot of financial information is "commercially sensitive". (Note: It's funny how Directors' salaries are "commerically sensitive", but ours are not!)

Management admitted that the company could save money by directly employing staff such as Protection Masters rather than paying fees to contractors. So RMT proposed that the job-cutting plan be put on hold until LU identified and made these savings. Management refused.

PUBLIC SAFETY AT RISK

RMT asked how it was possible to ensure the safety of the travelling public with 800 fewer staff than we have now. Management were unable to answer this question. We pointed out the list of literally hundreds of instances of unstaffed stations that we reported to the press were a danger to the public, having arisen because of 200 vacancies and an overtime ban. We told management that to even consider removing frontline staff on such a huge scale, especially in the run-up to the Olympics, was tantamount to playing Russian roulette with people's welfare.

ALTERNATIVES

Asked what alternative ways they had considered for saving money, management first avoided the question, then said that they had saved money in two others ways: cutting £90,000 from the company's telephone bill; and abandoning step-free access projects. So as well as cutting staff, LU is also denying disabled people access to the Underground system. We expressed our disgust at this.

RMT asked why the company was not considering cuts in management grades above centurion managers. Management replied that it might do so in future. We argued that if the company wants to cut costs, it makes sense to look at the much-better-paid, more expensive posts before, or instead of, the lower-paid jobs, especially when those lower-paid jobs are essential to running the railway.

VOLUNTARY SEVERANCE

Management said that they have not yet made a definite decision about voluntary severance. However, they may offer VS to managers but will probably not need to for others, because they had "managed vacancies" that they could scrap or move people into.

AND ONE MORE THING ...

The Director of Employee Relations said: "The Evening Standard is a rag. It is no friend of public enterprise. I don't want anything to do with it."

So at least there is one thing we agree on.