Tube workers strike ballot over job cuts

You might remember that in January London Underground announced there would be 1,000 job cuts (mainly made from administrative & temporary posts). Now the RMT union has announced that 10,000 workers will vote over strike action on this and pay from today.


The RMT, who believe 3,000 jobs are at risk, want TfL to withdraw the threat of compulsory redundancies. They say this is a part of TfL's plan to save £2.4bn.

Bob Crow the RMT's General Secretary said the job cuts are "simply unacceptable". His fighting talk continued "We said from the start that our members, whether in LUL or TfL, would not be made to pay for the failure and greed of bankers and privateers, and that any attempt to impose compulsory redundancies would be met with a ballot for industrial action

"If LUL and TfL want to avoid confrontation they should withdraw their plans to slash jobs and guarantee there will be no forced redundancies, start talking seriously about pay and call off the bully managers ."

TfL had previously said that the job cuts were not frontline and would not involve a reduction in services. A number of staff commented on this blog that the roles going were duplicates due to Metronet being moved into the London Underground.

I got the impression that those particular staff members certainly wouldn't go on strike because of loss of "pointless office drones".

CSA Joey went one step further and said "I'm an RMT member and usually support the RMT, but if Bob Crow thinks any operational staff will strike in support of haughty, self-important stuffed suits, he's got another think coming."

Let's see how many of the 9,999 other RMT members think the same. The ballots close on the 8th April and the results should be announced soon afterwards.