STAFF WORKING directly for Transport for London will go ahead with strike action on Sunday over the total and abject failure of the organisation to offer any kind of recognition and reward for the huge increase in workload and pressure arising from the extended Olympics period and for attempting to impose changes to working conditions and a unilateral ban on annual leave in some departments.

Despite strenuous efforts by RMT negotiators to reach a settlement, TFL have now confirmed that our members in travel information centres and call centres will receive absolutely no Olympic bonus. These RMT members are not even allowed to volunteer for the travel ambassador position and are therefore even unable to earn the paltry £20 a shift on offer to volunteer Travel ambassadors.

RMT has asked that TFL go to ACAS in order to resolve the dispute and they have refused to do so point blank.

In addition to having no Olympics reward our members are facing imposed Olympic rosters, short term changes to shifts and a block on annual leave. To add to the insult TfL senior managers have diverted the whole of their Olympic delivery funding to privately run call centres in Scotland (Journey Call) and Northampton (Novacroft).This runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds which could have been used towards a fair remuneration package for the staff in dispute.

In the face of this unreasonable and intransigent management stance, 24 hours of strike action from 21.30 hours on Sunday 1st July goes ahead and pickets will be out in force on Monday 2nd July at Victoria Travel Information Centre at 06.45hrs and 08.30hrs at Windsor House, Victoria Street.

The action by TFL staff comes as it emerged that senior bosses at the organisation are set to rake in massive Olympics payments themselves.

According to TfL's unaudited annual report, the top seven staff at the organisation are in line to cash in on two years of annual bonuses worth £560,000 which equates to £80,000 each if the system runs smoothly during the Olympic Games.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:

“The rank hypocrisy of TFL managers, who stand to hit the bonus jackpot during the Olympics while offering their own directly employed staff nothing, stinks and the refusal to even go to ACAS is an act of sheer contempt.

“These TFL staff will be as busy as anybody else and the attempt to bullying them into bans on annual leave and unilateral changes to working conditions for nothing in return is a disgrace.

“RMT remains available for talks and with Boris Johnson directly intervening in the bus dispute there is no excuse for him, as chair of TFL, not to get involved in settling this issue.