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RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march 2016 :: RMTnews
8
A
round 400 train operators
across the Piccadilly Line
on London Underground took
solid strike action this month
over a breakdown in industrial
relations combining a range of
issues.
Over 85 per cent of members
had voted for strike action with
an even larger number voting
for action short of a strike.
The union had entered into
talks in good faith but a hostile
and confrontational attitude by
LUL corroded and finally
collapsed the negotiating
process.
The Piccadilly is the fourth
busiest line on the tube network
transporting an average of
600,000 passengers a day and
services London’s Heathrow
airport – the busiest airport in
Europe.
The ballot for action was
called after a prolonged period
of industrial problems on the
line – some of which have been
directly related to serious
underlying issues with the aging
Piccadilly Line fleet.
Those issues have left drivers
in a vulnerable position and
have been used by management
as a tool to harass and threaten
members through misuse of the
disciplinary procedure.
There has also been an
appalling lack of consistency by
local management when it
comes to addressing the long-
running issues impacting on the
Piccadilly Line and which RMT,
as the main driver’s union, had
raised repeatedly over a number
of years.
RMT general secretary Mick
Cash said that the hostile and
aggressive attitude by tube
bosses had collapsed the normal
negotiating process and next the
strike action goes ahead exactly
as planned.
“The wholesale abuse of
procedures and agreements by
management on the Piccadilly
Line is rife and amounts to the
development of a campaign of
bullying, harassment and
intimidation that the union will
not allow to continue.
“RMT will not sit back and
allow individual members to be
picked off by a vindictive and
aggressive management who are
continuing to drag their heels
over addressing fundamental
safety issues which leave staff in
a vulnerable and exposed
position.
“RMT will not watch from the
side lines while our members are
boxed into a position where they
are left to take the rap for
repeated management failures
that the union has been raising
for years now.
“The combined weight of
these abuses and failures has
built up to a fundamental
collapse in industrial relations
that the company has done
nothing to address and which
has left RMT with no option but
to call strike action following
the overwhelming vote of by our
members,” he said.
PICCADILLY
LINE
STRIKE