This afternoon the Executive Committee of ASLEF the train drivers union has decided to give London Underground notice that our members across London Underground will strike on Wednesday 26th and Friday 28th of July.
Colleagues in the RMT will be taking action at the same time.
Our strategy has always been to take action only when needed. The last few weeks have shown that management are determined to try to push through detrimental changes despite trade union opposition if they can get away with it.
They have already announced that they intend to start training managers on a new attendance procedure in August and implement it from January, ignoring the current agreed procedure.
The new procedure would mean no right to representation or appeal at stage one and the length of all warnings doubled from 26 to 52 weeks. All sickness longer than one week would be regarded as “long term” meaning that your manager can send you to redeployment without any further meeting. After just six weeks in deployment you can be terminated.
Management also want to force through their plans for “trains modernisation”. They want unrestricted remote booking on and off, driving shifts up to 10 hours long, “flexible cover” weeks in every roster and fixed links to be scrapped. That would make it impossible to organise your life outside work or to have an effective change over system.
TfL senior management have no problem finding money for their own bonuses but their aim is an entirely flexible workforce with all existing agreements replaced allowing them to cut hundreds more jobs and forcing those who remain to work harder for longer.
To protect our pensions, our working conditions and agreements we need to act. We have to show management that we will not just allow them to use the pandemic and government funding agreements to undermine everything we have achieved in the past.
ASLEF members in London Underground including management grades, London Underground APD and LU Test Trains not to book for any duty between 00.01 and 23.59 on Wednesday 26th and any duty between 00.01 and 23.59 Friday 28th of July.
Finn Brennan
ASLEF District Organiser.