Right, Everybody Out!

The RMT today announced that it would be balloting its 10,000 members in LU on strike action to protest at the organisational change plans in operations that I described in a previous post (see “The Big Bang”). As I noted in that post, this was pretty predictable. Bob Crow is on record as saying that the plans will turn LU’s stations into a “mugger’s paradise” and that the changes will bring safety risks, which LU naturally disputes.

The safety angle, while not new, is being pushed more and more by the RMT in their disputes with all rail companies in a bid to get passengers on their side. This has proven me wrong – I said in pub chat regarding the LU network-wide strike last summer that the unions don’t care about public opinion, they only need to persuade management that strike action is costlier than accession to their demands. Clearly though, they do care about what the public has to say, just not enough to stop striking. While the RMT are always very concerned about the safety of their members, I doubt somehow that the safety and security of customers is at the forefront of their minds this time.

The union has long been against piecemeal measures proposed by LU designed either to make the workforce more flexible (e. g. deploy staff at more than one station rather than rostering to a single location, or train them to be multi-functional) or to reduce the workforce to the numbers that are actually needed. The organisational change in operations hits them with measures to do both at the same time, and I’d bet my annual salary that this is what has them riled up, not that a few more customers might fall victim to crime. That’s bad, and that’s sad, but what does Bob care more about?

So the ballot will go to RMT members across LU, and the result will probably be a strike. The timing of this announcement is curious, since the RMT set a deadline of 1700 on Thursday 25th March for LU to withdraw its plans, which at Company Council on that Thursday afternoon it refused to do. Whatever the reason behind the delay, you can probably now expect that an LU strike will be added to the other industrial action going on in this pathetically and lazily named “Spring of Discontent”.

Of course, if the strike does go ahead, I’ll be working. So watch this space for the Secret Diary of a London Blackleg…