In December, RMT revealed plans by London Underground management to close 144 ticket offices with the loss of 1,200 jobs. Your union can now reveal the company’s latest attempt to cut jobs: in a leaked report headed ‘Minimum Staffing Levels’, management plan to reduce station staffing numbers to a bare minimum.

London Underground has decided that all additional station staff duties required by project work must be covered by the Special Requirements Team - even where there are existing project CSAs at that location. As a result, those staff face being forced to move away to a work location where they do not want to work, and will be replaced by people who are not nearly as familiar with the station.

The station which this will affect immediately is Bank/Monument, which has just completed phase 1 of its project work but still has several more phases to go, and will not be completed for several years. As ‘On The Move’ recently pointed out, the Bank/Monument complex is the largest underground railway station in Europe. There are already serious concerns about staffing levels, assaults and evacuation times on the station, and replacing staff who are familiar with the running of the station and well-versed in evacuation procedures can only make these problems worse.

RMT Health & Safety Council representative Tony Gandolfi writes ...

I attended a meeting today looking at the placement of OLBI (Off Line Battery Inverters - emergency lighting batteries) information relating to individual faults at stations with multiple OLBIs, from the Congestion Control and Emergency Plans (CCEP) to the new Station Reference Files.

Swift action by RMT representatives has led to Acton Town group management withdrawing attempts to have CSAs "babysit" stations ie. work alone, covering the Supervisor's duty.

RMT strongly objects to this practice, because:

• CSAs are entitled to work with a Supervisor, as without one they are unsafe and vulnerable;

RMT raised the issue of medical restrictions on staff at the Strategy & Development Forum today. As the Stations & Revenue Health & Safety Council is due to discuss this issue at its next meeting on 12 November, we presented three key concerns that we would like to be included in that discussion:

Below is the company's (not the union's!) guidance on swine flu. Comments welcome!

Please find below our current response and actions you should take for staff that report sick with swine flu or flu like symptoms. This advice supersedes all previous advice with immediate effect. Please cascade this as necessary.

You'll probably be aware that Mayor Boris Johnson held a 'Swine Flu Summit' yesterday to address concerns. No trade unions were represented.

Meanwhile, LUL's Director of Safety is insisting there is no need to meet your safety representatives over the issue and that the entire thing is exaggerated.

Click '1 attachment' / file name to download a joint RMT/TSSA leaflet on swine flu from your London Underground Stations & Revenue Health & Safety Council reps. Read the text below.

You can read more union information about this issue on the RMT London Calling website by clicking here.

Influenza A (H1N1) – Swine Flu Update.

TRANSPORT UNION RMT warned today of severe pressures on staffing levels and serious safety risks across the transport system as experts advised that up to 40% of the population could become ill with the swine flu over the coming weeks.

STRIKE BREAKERS NEED TO OPEN THEIR EYES

Management want to scrap the ‘no compulsory redundancies agreement’, they have made that clear, (RMT members took 2 days strike action to secure this agreement, and won).They go on to say that the only planned job losses are admin, not front line. So then why do they want to scrap it for operational front line staff too?

Article from May 2009 edition of Finsbury Park Branch Monthly News

While Victoria line drivers are being sacked for safety breaches which would not even have occurred had the company fitted correct-side door enable equipment to its trains, it seems that managers can make safety-critical mistakes with impunity. An example of this took place on 7th May at Blackhorse Road station. At about 1700, both escalators failed. The Supervisor tried everything to get at least one of them restarted but without success. Because both escalators were inoperative, the Supervisor evacuated and closed the station as required by the Congestion Control and Emergency Plan (CCEP) for the station. A while later, engineers arrived to try to fix the escalators. So far, so good.

stationsafety@rmtlondoncalling.org .uk www.rmtlondoncalling.org.uk/swineflu

08 May 2009

"We hope the virus fizzles out, because if it doesn't we are heading for a big outbreak...I'm not predicting the pandemic will blow up, but if I miss it and we don't prepare, I fail. I'd rather over-prepare than not prepare".
WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan

Click '1 attachment' / file name to download a leaflet from your health and safety reps about swine flu.

Click on '1 attachment' / file name to download this leaflet. Read the text below.

Today, Victoria Line drivers are striking. One reason for this is that London Underground will not install safety equipment that stops doors opening on the wrong side of the train.

Do you have a mobile phone?.......do you have a cordless phone at home?...........have Wi-FI?............Have ever monitored your children with a baby monitor?..........

Recently I was given the following document to read by someone who works in radiation research.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13756250/Public-Health-Implications-of-Wireles...

RMT press release, issued today

BRITAIN’S BIGGEST rail and Tube union hailed today’s scheduled tabling in parliament of new fire-safety regulations for sub-surface stations as vindication of a five-year campaign to retain standards imposed in the wake of the 1987 King’s Cross fire, which claimed 31 lives.

Management have informed RMT that Transec will be carrying out 'covert testing exercises' on stations. Transec will leave a bag unattended on a station, and then observe how station staff deal with it. The exercise will initially take place at "a selection of designated Category A stations", and its aim is to check that unattended bags will be identified and dealt with during hourly security checks or other duties.

The previous London Mayor Ken Livingstone commisioned a Nuclear Transportation Risk Assesment for London due to concerns about trains carrying nuclear waste through London. This was awarded to Serco Assurance Limited.

Where do these trains travel? Over the Bakerloo Line and the London Overground, on both slow and fast lines. They run through many joint stations including Willesden Junction, Stratford, Highbury and Islington,
Kensington Olympia, West Brompton and the new Shepherds Bush rail Station next to the tube station.

The BBC Panorama programme entitled The Secret Policeman Returns charted progress at encouraging black and minority ethnic (BME) people into the force since a similar programme exposed racism among police recruits five years ago.

However shocking evidence was revealed into racism in the British Transport Police. The programme highlights an incident that took place two weeks ago in which two Asian British Transport police sergeants found the Ku Klux Klan emblem and other racist graffiti scraped into their lockers at their station in Stockwell, London.