Defending jobs

Rail union RMT today pledged an all-out political, public and industrial fight following the announcement from Transport for London (TfL) to introduce Driver Only Operation (DOO) on the whole of the London Overground network. At a meeting with the LOROL senior management held on Monday at Overground House, RMT demanded that the plans, would lead to the scrapping of the Guard grades and the implementation of DOO, be withdrawn.

Join the protest at 8am on Monday

TUBE UNION RMT will hold a protest at Whitechapel station at 8am next Monday – 15th July – as the union steps up the campaign to defend ticket offices on London Underground from attempts by Mayor Boris Johnson to smuggle in ticket office closures through the back door – despite pledging to oppose closures before he was elected.

That we note the latest correspondence on file following the announcement from Transport for London (TfL) to introduce Driver Only Operation (DOO) on the whole of the LOROL network. We note that at an initial meeting with the LOROL senior management held yesterday at Overground House and led by their Managing Director, our Lead Officer & our General Secretary both argued in line with RMT policy that this union is completely opposed to the scrapping of the Conductor Guard grades and the implementation of DOO.

Rail union RMT today pledged an all out fight, including the use of strike action, following the bombshell announcement that over a hundred guards on London Overground will be kicked off the trains and sacked within the year in the first tranche of multi million pound spending cuts on London's transport services in the wake of the Government spending review.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said;

We note the report and correspondence on file, and are disgusted by Trainpeople’s failure to pay its former employees' wages in full. The agency is legally obliged to do so, regardless of whether and when the hirer company, London Underground Ltd, paid fees to the agency, Trainpeople.co.uk. We therefore instruct the General Secretary to provide these members with all the documentation in our possession that may assist with their legal case.

We welcome the report from our Regional Organiser.

We note that LUL presented its three-month review of its detrainment procedure to our Trains Safety Council representatives on Monday 1 July. The company has made no progress in achieving a technical solution to minimising overcarries, and continues to deploy station staff as part of its detrainment procedure.

It is therefore clear that the work being carried out by station staff is permanent. It is thus no longer appropriate for this to be done by the Special Requirements Team; rostored station staff posts should be restored.

From RMT General Secretary Bob Crow

Many of you will be aware that Whitechapel Underground station is undergoing a huge refurbishment, which will see the station serving thousands more customers each year, as a result of the Crossrail project. However, London Underground has announced plans to remove and close the Ticket Office from July 2014, which will also result in the loss of SAMF positions.

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It is an indication of the way things are that the most important issue in this SFC News is about something management will not discuss at Functional Council.
Once again we have asked LU to come clean and tell members what their plans are for our stations. Vauxhall has now been added to the list of stations that will be refurbished and re-opened without a ticket office. Management refuse to say which other stations, or even how many will lose their ticket offices.