While ASLEF EC member Terry Wilkinson and I, and the other unions were meeting TfL senior management late this afternoon, the PM announced that the response to Covid-19 was being stepped up.
You will all be thinking through the implications of that and the effect it will have on you and your family. ASLEF will work with TfL to keep a service running on the Underground. We know that it is vital that NHS staff, care workers and essential staff in distribution and public services can get to and from work.
Our members are highly professional people who take their responsibility to the wider community seriously. But TfL has to take its responsibility to staff equally seriously.That means fully supporting staff who can not attend work and getting a grip on the issues around cleaning and hand sanitisers etc.
Anyone who is well enough to do so and whose personal circumstances allow them to, should continue to come to work. That means that hospital staff and others will in turn, be able to get to work to help those who need it.
There will almost certainly be major changes in the situation over the next days and weeks. Management have committed to working with us urgently through our agreed machinery to deal with this. Your elected Trains Council reps will meet management tomorrow morning and will have the full support of all our Union in dealing with the circumstances we face.
Members who have underlying health conditions or need to support family members should do what is right for themselves and their family. No one will be penalised for doing the right thing. But we should all do the right thing by ourselves, our family and our communities.
As train drivers and transport workers we are used to being reviled for our solidarity and collective spirit. But those are the values that we will all need to show in the weeks and months ahead.