Tube train drivers are to begin industrial action on Friday morning in a move likely to cause delays and disruption to the capital’s underground network.
The action was agreed by a margin of four to one by members of the UK’s largest transport union, the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, in a row with London Underground over safety.
The RMT’s 1,500 drivers – about half of the total workforce – are refusing to comply with LU’s new Operational Effectiveness Programme in favour of “proven safe procedures” for, among other things, reversing trains. The remaining drivers belong to rival union Aslef, but are also expected to support their colleagues unofficially.
The RMT’s general secretary Bob Crow said: “London Underground is attempting to impose dangerous operational changes that are cost-led, will undermine established safety procedures and will put our members and the travelling public in potential danger.”
The procedures” were being “bulldozed through” in a dash for cuts and to cover up the impact of reductions in station staff “and LU had “the gall to call it ‘operational effectiveness’”, he added.
LU has hotly denied that its Programme will jeopardise passenger safety, however, and Howard Collins, the firm’s chief operating officer urged drivers to “reconsider their plans to take industrial action”.
Cutting costs
He told the London Evening Standard that the new procedures had been developed in “exhaustive consultation” with the union over the last two years and did not compromise “any aspect “of the Underground’s “stringent” safety practices.
Earlier this week, however, the RMT exposed a confidential LU report, which revealed that 1,500 jobs could be cut. The leaked ‘Operational Strategy’ discussion paper pointed to proposals to make financial cuts of 20% across the board.
Reductions in expenditure would come from axing most of the system’s 258 ticket offices and creating all-purpose travel information centres at just 30 stations. Most stations would be unstaffed, driverless trains would be introduced, recruitment would be frozen and a system of overtime and part-time working introduced.
Mike Brown, managing director of London Rail and Underground, told the Financial Times, that “no decisions have actually been taken on any of these things going forward”.
“It has not been adopted by senior management, the TfL board or the mayor and so does not represent agreed proposals for change,” Brown said, although he added: “We need to examine how new technologies can further improve efficiency and how we can respond to the changing needs of customers.”
Brown refused to clarify whether the proposed changes would lead to job losses. This summer, the company’s programme of slashing 800 operational jobs led to a series of Tube strikes.
