RMT blasts Mayor’s “transport strategy” as a smokescreen for job cuts, ticket office closures and attacks on safety standards

TUBE UNION RMT today blasted London Tory Mayor Boris Johnson for throwing up a smokescreen under the guise of a “Transport Strategy”, designed to deflect attention away from his multi-billion transport cuts package that threatens thousands of jobs, ticket office closures across the Capital and a systematic undermining of current safety standards.

Section 10.1(a) of the Employment Relations Act 1999 states:

Right to be accompanied

(1) This section applies where a worker—

(a) is required or invited by his employer to attend a disciplinary or grievance hearing, and

(b) reasonably requests to be accompanied at the hearing.

(2) Where this section applies the employer must permit the worker to be accompanied at the hearing by a single companion who—

(a) is chosen by the worker and is within subsection (3),

Here are some of the responses we have received from passengers to our 'Staff Our Stations' leaflets:

"White City Tube Station is very busy and well and is situated at the heart of a large residential community and serves a number of major businesses such as the BBC and Westfield Shopping Centre. I object most strongly to the proposed staff cuts at this station."
Simon McKay

Figures obtained by RMT show that from October 2009 through to March 2010 surface level stations on the District, Central, Metropolitan, Circle & Hammersmith and Northern Lines were left unstaffed for entire shifts on a total of 439 occasions. One station, Mill Hill East, was left unstaffed for 95 entire shifts.

Current cuts plans being implemented by London Underground would see up to 800 ticket office, station and platform staff jobs axed creating a wave of ticket office closures and ushering in a culture of unstaffed tube stations, particularly late at night.