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Will government and industry clear Olympic transport hurdle?
The failure of privatisation is at the heart of the crisis on the Tube, now thought to have cost £5bn, argues Bob Crow
THERE is a sense of crisis on the London Underground network and London Mayor Boris Johnson and LUL management needs to act to deal with it.
Yet all they are doing is trying to impose job cuts and a pay deal which would mean a real pay cut in future years.
Both Transport for London and LUL are seeking massive job cuts which could mean the axing of up to 4,000 posts with the ripping up of existing agreements on compulsory redundancies.
The bullying and victimisation of Tube staff is also rife.
That is why Tube workers have won the support of other unions, London Labour MPs, GLA members and former London mayor Ken Livingstone in their battle to defend jobs and safety on London Underground.
Plans for a £60million cut in maintenance on the former Metronet lines are also an unacceptable safety risk.
The new package of cuts comes on the back of a recent National Audit Office report which identified a £410million loss to the taxpayer, and the paying down of £1.7billion in debt, from the collapse of Metronet.
It’s that failure of privatisation which is at the heart of the financial crisis on the Tube which is now thought to have cost as much as £5billion.
Boris Johnson and Transport Secretary Lord Adonis must also facilitate an urgent industrywide Olympics summit between the unions, train operating companies, London Underground and Network Rail to set out a clear transport framework for the 2012 games.
RMT fears that the industry is sleep-walking into a situation where it will be completely unprepared to deal with the specific safety, staffing and industrial relations issues that the Olympics will bring.
With the games now only three years away, there is still no industrywide transport plan for the games and no confirmation of what structure will be in place to take overall charge of transport policy for the 2012 Olympics. There are urgent questions that we need to be addressing now. Will we have sufficient rail capacity and trained staff to deal with the massive extra demand that will be placed on our transport system?
Will there be properly resourced safety and security measures in place?
We want a London Olympics where everyone involved at every level will be paid at least the London Living Wage. Big business makes billions out of the Olympics and it’s known as an event where corporate hospitality and largesse let rip.
RMT wants 2012 to be an event where safe and properly resourced transport services are seen as a priority and if the big corporations have to pick up the tab, so be it.
RMT has made it clear that we are available for talks but the silence from the Mayor and his senior managers suggests that they prefer confrontation and disruption.
We are telling them that the time has come to get out of the bunker and start talking to the staff who have been pushed into this strike by the management’s outrageous demands on pay cuts and job losses.
Over 120 Tube bosses earn over £100,000 a year plus bonuses. Instead of attacking our members’ jobs and pay the senior managers, who pull in over a quarter a million a year, should start earning their money and start talking to RMT.
More than a year into his term of office, it’s about time Mr Johnson met face-to-face the biggest Tube union to deal with the range of issues which have provoked this dispute on the transport system he has responsibility for.
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