Dear Colleagues,

DEFEND JOBS, PENSIONS AND AGREEMENTS

LONDON UNDERGROUND

STRIKE ACTION ON TUESDAY 1ST AND THURSDAY 3RD MARCH

 Your RMT Lead Officer and Senior Reps from each function met Senior LUL management at ACAS today regarding this dispute which affects all RMT LUL members and is supported by a magnificent yes vote for industrial action.

LUL called this meeting despite RMT writing to the Mayor of London on 13th January demanding talks at his level to discuss the planned attacks on our members. LUL asked for clarification on the reasons for strikes planned for 1st and 3rd March and said they wanted to listen to what was required to get the strikes cancelled in the spirit of working together to resolve the issues.

Your Union clearly explained that we did not want to take this industrial action. However, we are appalled that after nearly 2 years of working closely with LUL to deliver an essential service to the capital city, including changing a number of our agreements and working arrangements to do this, our members are now facing attacks on an unprecedented scale.

These attacks are mainly as a result of the financial incompetence at the very highest level of TfL including the Mayor's Office. Due to this incompetence, members are now facing an immediate attack on their final salary pension scheme demanding savings of £100m per year and other savings planned of around £500m per year mainly through other attacks on jobs and our agreements and working conditions.

Therefore, in order to make progress in this dispute on behalf of all our members and potentially suspend the industrial action your negotiating team made the following demands:

1.    Pensions - there must be absolutely no changes whatsoever to the final salary pension scheme which is in effect deferred wages for you and your family in retirement.

2.    Headcount - there must be no reduction in positions on LUL - jobs that you and new starters need to enable a decent standard of living and to enable the pension fund to remain healthy.

3.    No changes to agreements - our agreements form part of your terms and conditions and have been built up over many years and we demanded that there are no changes which would be detrimental to members.

Management took an adjournment and then regrettably made no meaningful response to our demands but tried to pretend that the only planned attacks were on station grades jobs. This is a classic divide and rule tactic and RMT responded that this is not acceptable.

LUL made no denials that they are planning these attacks so now is the time to stick together and fight off these attacks as an all grades union right now.

STAND FIRM TOGETHER - SUPPORT THE ACTION

SUPPORT YOUR UNION

We remain available for further talks and I will keep you advised of all further developments.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Lynch
General Secretary