HEATHROW EXPRESS MEMBERS BACK STRIKE ACTION

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: may 2011 :: RMTnews 6 R MT members working for Heathrow Express have voted overwhelmingly for strike action and action short of a strike in a dispute over pay. RMT members based at Heathrow Airport and Paddington will strike for 48 hours from 03:40 hours on May 27, and for 24 hours from 03:40 hours on Friday June 24. Further action will also be scheduled in July. Over 90 per cent of those taking part in the ballot rejected an offer from the company for the two years up to the end of 2012 as “unsatisfactory” and backed strike action and action short of strike action. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that Heathrow Express had tabled a two year pay offer which was loaded with strings and which fails to meet workers’ demands for a fair deal taking them through the Olympics period. “As a result our members have now voted by a massive margin for action. “It is now down to the company to come back to us with a proposal that properly rewards our members for the hard work they put in to delivering the successful and highly-profitable Heathrow Express service,” he said R MT has welcomed the transfer of the train maintenance contract on London Underground’s Jubilee Line from the privately-owned Alstom to the publicly-owned Tube Lines. The transfer comes at a time when the Jubilee Line is plagued by delays and disruptions, and illustrates that the union was right to campaign against the contracting-out of Tube maintenance work. The union also called for the other contract held by Alstom, on the Northern Line, to be transferred to Tube Lines as part of the return of all contracted-out services to a fully-integrated, publicly- owned public transport system. London Transport regional organiser Steve Hedley said that throughout the transfer process, the union insisted that members suffered no attack on their terms and conditions of employment. He said that talks on these matters are ongoing, with the exception of the issue of pensions, as about 25 Alstom staff are in a Defined Benefit (DB) scheme which Tube Lines does not have. “To resolve this issue and avoid detriment to our members, we demand that TfL admit all Alstom (and Tube Lines) staff into the TfL final salary pension scheme and be given free passes in line with everyone else in TfL and LUL,” he said. R MT is balloting Tube driver members on the Jubilee Line for action short of a strike in a dispute over attempts by management to ride roughshod over agreed safety procedures. As a direct result of the continuing failures and breakdowns of the operating system on the Jubilee Line, a legacy of the tube privatisation fiasco, tube bosses are now under instruction from the top to ignore agreed safety procedures to short- cut the clearance of blockages on the line. Without conducting a full risk assessment, and without issuing proper briefings to train operators, tube bosses are trying to impose from above a massive change to safety procedures that would allow them to instruct drivers to move trains in restricted manual mode (overriding the automated Jubilee operating system) through the RS (route secure) protocol over points without the need to scotch and clip the points. Scotching and clipping has long been rail industry standard procedure for ensuring that points are manually fixed in a safety- critical situation to avoid any chance of derailment or of a train following the wrong route - a failure that could have devastating consequences. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that the high-profile spate of failures and breakdowns on the Jubilee Line was driving an attempt to short-cut the consultation machinery and safety procedures. “The solution to the growing problems on the Jubilee Line is to tackle the core faults with the fleet and operating systems that the failure of tube privatisation has lumbered us with - cutting corners on safety procedures is a guaranteed recipe for making a bad situation even worse,” he said. JUBILEE LINE DRIVERS BALLOTED OVER SAFETY HEATHROW EXPRESS MEMBERS BACK STRIKE ACTION LU ALSTOM MEMBERS TRANSFERRED TO TUBE LINES