by Bill O’Dowd, Trains Council

LUL management can’t get a new Attendance At Work policy, so say they will ‘enforce the existing one’. This means there will be no more ‘not normally counted items’ such as medical treatments at hospital, unless it is an emergency admittance!

At most depots, everyone is now sent to Local Disciplinary Interview (LDI), and gets the maximum 26-week warning for a first offence (even if it’s only two one-day items in a 13-week period). If you go for a second LDI (stage 2) you will then get a 52-week warning. After that, it’s a full Company Disciplinary, where you could be dismissed.

Management have put in a new ‘three and out’ system on so-called staff errors. If you were to, say, pick up late three times (or be blamed for it) in a 13-week period, you could very likely go to an LDI and receive under the code of conduct, up to 52 weeks warning! It is easy to blame the driver for others’ mistakes: wrong road given in depot, wrong platform written for pick ups, to name just a couple.

So it is attendance clampdown, then performance monitoring. Either way they are gonna get you! Make sure you are well insured! At this time of credit crunch, job losses and recession, it is no time to gamble with who represents you.

Join RMT – that’s if you aren’t already a member like the majority of drivers on LUL now!