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Big Society? Big Cuts, Big Protest! |
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By Socialist Appeal
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Wednesday, 01 December 2010 |
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Following on from the latest strike on London Underground, we reproduce here an information circular doing the rounds of TU lists in the London area:
On Wednesday 15th December at 10.00am a delegation from the RMT will
present hundreds of signed postcards from passengers across London to
the Mayor, Boris Johnson, calling for an end to the threatened jobs
massacre. As part of this a protest has been called to raise awareness
of what the reality of the jobs massacre will be and to call for the
Lynch; and Peter Hartshorn.
This protest has been directly inspired by the student protesters who
demonstrated against tuition fees on the 10th November and again on
the 24th November. The cuts happening on London Underground are part
and parcel of the cuts happening to the London Fire Brigade, the
staggering increase in tuition fees and the threatened privatisation
of Royal Mail.
We call on all trade unionists, students and everyone opposing the
cuts, not just in London Underground, but throughout wider society to
join us on Wednesday 15th to show the Tories and their Lib-Dem lapdogs
that the cuts won’t happen without a fight.
James Wong-McSweeney, RMT London Young Members' Officer (Personal capacity)
No to job cuts and yes to fully staffed stations!
London
Underground management are currently trying to get rid of
around 800 gateline and ticket office jobs. These planned job cuts are
just one small part of a larger plan to get rid of more than 5000
positions in stations, on the trains and in maintenance following the
huge meltdowns of Metronet and Tubelines, which were,
pre-privatisation, the maintenance departments of London Underground.
open later, close earlier and be even busier than they are now, e.g.
Temple station ticket office is to go from roughly 12 hours to just
two. On the east end of the District line there are plans for one
supervisor, one ticket seller and NO gateline staff for the majority
of the day.
Management’s feeble excuse for the cuts are that because of the
introduction of Oyster cards less
people are buying tickets from the
ticket offices. The obviousness of this lie is shown by the fact that
the number of tickets a ticket office must sell to be considered
viable has been doubled from 15/hour to 30/hour. Even if it was true
that less tickets are being sold ticket office staff do a lot more
than just sell tickets: they give ticket and travel advice to
passengers; help sort out the frequent problems with Oyster cards; and
take care of the ticket machines.
The RMT have offered to go into binding arbitration at ACAS over
Management's reasoning for why they need to shut ticket offices.
Management have, surprise surprise, refused the offer. Management have
also victimised three RMT reps: Eamonn Lynch, Bakerloo Line Driver;
Arwyn Thomas, Northern Line Driver; and Peter Hartshorn, Green Park
Group. Despite all of this the strikes have
not only held strong but
have been getting stronger. But to win this dispute the RMT needs the
support not only of the other London Underground unions, TSSA and
ASLEF, but of the unions throught London.
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