Click on the attachment to see the latest 'RMT up front', newsletter of the RMT train grades committee.

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Bend it like Beckham!
Becks can bend a ball, but not half as much as LU can bend standards and procedures
Remember the disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell? He used to ask his legal advisors for their legal opinion; if he didn’t like their answer, he’d sack them, and get a new legal advisor. He’d repeat the process until he got the opinion he wanted. LU is no better. They have standards to ensure health and safety is maintained, if they don’t have enough staff to ensure standards and procedures are carried out correctly, they just bend the rules to suit them.

Staff shortages, as a result of the overtime ban by depot staff, have left LU unable to comply with their own rolling stock standards with regards to trip-cock testing on ‘A’ stock trains. No problem to LU; just bend it like Beckham and apply to ‘yourself’ for a concession to your own safety standards. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
As a result of this concession, some trains on the Met might not get their trip-cock tested for up to 48 hrs. The risks here is obvious: if the trip-cock fails to operate following a SPAD, we have disasters waiting to happen.
To add insult to possible injury, when the local reps queried the wisdom and legitimacy of this unsafe way of work, LU produced a new document, previously unseen and never consulted upon, that claimed that trains could run for up to 48 hours without trip-cock testing under the following circumstances: special timetable operation, abnormal service patterns and failure of trip-cock testers. That just about covers every eventuality. And get this, the document goes on to say that should LU require longer than 48 hours they will assess this on a case by case basis.
It’s no surprise that this previously unseen document has been signed off by the Operational Standards team, the people who attempted to bring in the Operational Effectiveness Programme. Have these people gone to war on safety?
We at the RMT are old fashioned. We like things like brakes and trip-cocks on our trains. Our head office officials will be taking this matter up with LU with some urgency.
work? No, they wouldn’t. Will you?

OEP, RIP!
Common sense prevails as the Operational Effectiveness Programme is consigned to the bin
Drivers will remember, this is the programme of works, from the Operational Standards Team, that would have you despatching blind, from LU’s busiest Cat ‘A’ platforms, with no OPO, no assisting station staff and not a hope in hell of doing it safely.
This is the programme that wanted drivers to take passengers into sidings when they couldn’t get them off the train quick enough, just to speed up the service for a minute, regardless of the safety of our staff or passengers.
This is the programme that wanted you to take sick or incapacitated passengers into the siding so they didn’t cause delays.
This is the programme that wanted drivers to check the signal after a SPAD, if you had a green aspect, carry on.
The RMT have argued all along that the proposals in this programme of changes were about service recovery at the expense of safety. There is nothing wrong with looking for more efficient ways of doing things but this was a rule change too far.
Fortunately for drivers and the paying public, LU’s director of safety agreed with the RMT that these proposals were just not safe. What is very surprising is why it took LU so long to come to this conclusion? There were numerous consultative meetings, with top manager after top manager queuing up to support this programme of change. Questions must be asked about their judgement and their commitment to the safe operation of our railway.
If LU is serious about saving money then surely questions must be asked about the amount of man hours that have been wasted on this rubbish.
Unfortunately, it will be back to the drawing board for these people, and they will be looking again at how they can squeeze every last minute out of the timetable and the driver’s working day, and as these rejected proposals have shown, safety to front line staff and the paying public is a secondary consideration.