Yesterday, Thursday Sept 7th, your ASLEF team once again met management at ACAS for the latest in a series of over 60 meetings to try to resolve our dispute over their failure to honour commitments made as part of the 2015 pay settlement.

Although we had expected that we would finally be given a proposal by management to reduce weekend working, as they promised 18 months ago, they simply repeated that they currently “have no plans to increase” it. This is a

deliberately disingenuous approach; senior managers have made clear they want to be able to increase the number of weekend shifts you work from the end of the current pay deal.

It is now over six months since we submitted ten pages of detailed proposals, designed to be safe and mutually beneficial, that reduced weekend working and gave the option to reduce the number of shifts drivers work on a pro-rata basis. Not only have LU still not given any detailed response, it's increasingly clear that the senior managers responsible haven’t even read them!

This is part of a pattern of deliberate delay and obstruction by management. Earlier this year they promised to launch a new job share scheme by July. Now they say they will do it next year! Instead of rolling out the opportunity to give the choice of 4 day week rosters to those who want to do them, they now say they want to do an online survey, with questions they have already chosen, of people who decided not to take part in the trial ! Quite simply this is time wasting and obstruction with the aim of preventing other depots who might choose this option being able to do so.

There is also not a single new proposal to improve career development opportunities or create a fair promotion system for drivers.

London Underground want to walk away from the commitments they made as part of your pay deal. Having slashed station numbers, closed booking offices and ripped up working conditions in other grades they want to able to do the same to drivers.

Only ASLEF is prepared to fight this and only a strong Yes vote will show management that you are not prepared to have your agreements ignored and undermined as others have.

Please make sure you have returned you ballot paper and encourage colleagues to do so too. Anyone who has not yet received a ballot paper should contact Head Office on 0207 3242400 immediately so that it can be reissued.