London Underground (LU) has today written to the leaderships of the TSSA and RMT unions asking them to return to talks at ACAS on Friday 24 September to avoid further disruption to Londoners.

LU met with the unions at ACAS on Wednesday 22 September for six hours, and proposed to resume talks again on Friday morning.

Despite claims by the unions that the dispute is about safety, no safety-related issues were put to LU at that time, and have not been raised in any other meetings.

Instead, the unions once again made the demand that LU should withdraw all proposals for staffing changes before talks could progress.

LU is involved in an extensive consultation process with staff over the proposed arrangements, which are being introduced in response to a decrease in customer demand for ticket office services.

LU has assured the unions unequivocally that the changes will be delivered without compulsory redundancies or loss of earnings, that all stations with a ticket office will continue to have one and that all stations will be staffed at all times.

Howard Collins, LU Chief Operating Officer, said: 'We met with the leaderships of the TSSA and RMT unions at ACAS for six hours on Wednesday and were, once again, faced with the demand that we withdraw our staffing plans before talks can progress.

'With some ticket offices now selling fewer than ten tickets per hour London Underground needs to change, and we cannot agree to this demand.

'Despite their claims that this dispute is about safety, the unions' leaderships have not even tried to make any case to us that these proposals impact upon safety standards.

'We have assured the unions' leaderships that our plans have no impact on safety standards and have given a cast-iron guarantee that these plans involve no compulsory redundancies or loss of earnings.

'We have assured them again that every station that has a ticket office now will have one in future, and all stations will be staffed at all times.

'We remain ready and willing to discuss any aspect of our proposals, including any specific safety concerns, and we hope the leaderships of the TSSA and RMT will return to talks at ACAS tomorrow, call off this pointless industrial action and stop threatening Londoners with disruption.'

Notes to editors:

  • Some LU ticket offices now regularly sell fewer than 10 tickets an hour. The quietest ticket offices include North Ealing, which sells less than six tickets per hour, and Latimer Road and Moor Park, which sell only around seven tickets per hour
  • Overall, sales from ticket offices are down 28 per cent over the last four years as more and more people switch to Oyster and just one in 20 Tube journeys now starts with a visit to a ticket office
  • Under LU's proposals staff will be more effectively deployed to areas of stations where they can better assist customers, removing duplication of roles whilst delivering the best possible value for fare and taxpayers
  • The proposed changes would mean a reduction in the total number of posts across LU, but will involve no compulsory redundancies, and will have no impact on the Tube's high safety standards
  • Currently, RMT and TSSA maintenance and engineering staff will begin their 24-hour strike at 17:00 on Sunday 3 October, and other RMT and TSSA Tube staff, including station staff and some drivers, will start at 21:00
  • The changes would not affect Tube drivers, and the majority of the roughly 800 posts that are identified for reduction are ticket office staff; this also includes a saving of around 150 posts from reductions in management and administrative staff. This is out of a total of around 19,000 LU staff, so represents less than five per cent of the workforce. Some 250 positions are already, or are expected to become vacant, so these would merely not be filled