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January

The groundbreaking deal negotiated by the RMT that gives all full-time station and revenue control staff 52' days leave has won overwhelming support

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London and Chair of Transport for London, has written the following letter to Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT, in reply to Mr Crow's call for Mr Livingstone to intervene to ask London Underground to postpone the implementation of the 35-hour week agreement with station staff:

"Dear Bob

Thank you for your letter of 4 January.

Slightly over a year ago London Underground and the RMT came to an agreement that was overwhelmingly in the interests both of London Underground employees and all Londoners.

It secured a reduction to a 35-hour week for LUL employees and this was paid for out of work changes that resulted in no fares increase for Londoners - a win-win situation. A year later I am informed by London Underground that the new rosters to implement this agreement have already been agreed by 40 out of 44 station groups covering 90 per cent of station staff.

I would like to recall how the RMT described this agreement in your journal RMT News: 'The groundbreaking deal negotiated by the RMT that gives all full-time station and revenue control staff 52 days' leave has won overwhelming support. Nearly 100 per cent of members voting accepted the deal in a referendum.'

You said the agreement was: 'the best 35-hour agreement of any grade of staff on LUL, or on any other UK train-operating company'.

You pointed out: 'That means an extra 15 days' leave a year, bringing the total, including Bank Holidays, to 52 days' leave each year - real quality time away from work, and a true 35-hour week agreement.'

I agree with those statements you made at that time. I am anxious that we should stick to this good agreement and that London Underground should implement this agreement to give its staff a 35-hour week without further delay.

The current date for the new rosters, 5 February, is 15 months after the deal was agreed. To postpone implementation further at this stage would create chaos in the negotiations and compromise staff holiday arrangements.

I therefore cannot agree that it would be in anyone's interests to suspend the introduction of the new rosters. This would simply be to tear up an agreement that was rightly hailed by both sides at the time and the detailed implementation of which has been agreed by the great majority of stations. That would mean that agreements once reached could be simply overturned at will. It is not possible to act on that basis. It would also mean postponing the implementation of the 35-hour week agreed more than a year ago.

You say that you are trying to avoid disruption to millions of people, but, as I am informed, the RMT broke off negotiations and called these strikes before the procedures for settling outstanding issues on the rosters by negotiation had been exhausted.

As it is not proposed to implement the new rosters until 5 February, I can see no reason for short-circuiting the procedure for discussing these issues and instead calling strikes.

Various different justifications for the proposed strikes have been given to the media. Bobby Law has claimed on television that London Underground is planning to cut 500-800 jobs. This is categorically untrue. LUL has given you binding assurances that this agreement involves no cut in the overall numbers of station staff.

You have also suggested that the new rosters will be unsafe. This is also factually false. All new rosters will be fully validated for safety and all safety issues will be properly addressed.

For these reasons I do not believe it would be right to seek to persuade LUL to postpone the implementation of the new rosters. I hope that you will join LUL in discussing the remaining few areas where rosters still need to be agreed, call off a strike which is not in the interests of your members or of Londoners, and implement with LUL an agreement which is to the great advantage of both LUL employees and

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