London Underground indicative ballot on industrial action

TSSA members at London Underground are urged to take part in a vote on their willingness to take industrial action in an escalating dispute over safe staffing levels across the network and imposed changes to working arrangements. 

TSSA has serious concerns about the impact of cutting 600 front line roles. Reports of stations being closed or having reduced opening times, and of attacks on staff, are rising as the impact of vacancies being left unfilled takes effect.  

The indicative ballot is open and will close on 18 November. “We’re urging members at LU to check your email inbox for your link to the online indicative ballot and cast your vote as soon as possible – don’t delay, do it today!” said TSSA Organiser Mel Taylor. 

“The stealth job cuts across LU are being felt by both staff and passengers, with lots of reports of stations being unable to open because of insufficient staff” explained Mel. “This is clearly a sorry state of affairs, leading to passengers unable to catch vital transport services, and unfortunately sometimes taking their frustration out on staff. We’re asking members to fill out our incident reporting form [LINK] to tell us when stations are closed, opened up late in the morning, or to report attacks on staff so we can collect this damning information to take to LU. Attacks on staff must also be reported to the employer so that action can be taken to protect employees across the network.” 

In addition to station closures, London Underground are cutting staff and changing working arrangements in the Special Requirements Team, which provides additional coverage at stations for big events and venues such as Wembley and the O2. There are also imposed changes impacting Revenue Control staff, whose numbers are not adequate to deal effectively with ticketless travel and fare evasion. London Undergrounds changes will make it even harder for these staff to do their jobs to best effect and to recoup the millions of pounds lost each year due to ticketless travel.

“We know that there are plans to make hundreds of millions of pounds of further savings in LU over the coming years, but if these savings come in the form of staffing cuts then TfL and LU will be putting services and safety at risk” warned Mel. “These staff are vital to ensuring that services can run and run safely and collect the fares that are crucial to TfL’s revenue.” 

Please use TSSA’s incident reporting form [LINK] to let us know about station closures, attacks on staff or other service failures or incidents. We are using this information as evidence in our talks with LU about safe staffing levels.