[London] TfL update ...

[dancefloorlandmine]

According to my latest TfL update email ...

TfL advise completing your journey by 1700 where possible.

Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines are expected to operate normally, but will be very crowded.

Due to knock-on effects, services may not return to normal levels until Friday morning if the strike is not resolved.

EDIT: In the interests of ongoing political debate, I've set up a post as a forum for this, here.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

Hmm... buggeration as regards travelling (getting to my diving tonight by bus could be interesting).

On the other hand, as a socialist... go go action Bob Crow.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

Can I use you as the lazy web? I'm instinctively in favour of union action, being a union person myself, but I know unions aren't *always* in the right. AFAICT, they're asking for no reductions in pensions and benefits, which sounds entirely reasonable to me. Do you know more?

[steer.livejournal.com]

I don't know too much I'm afraid. I've been rather too lazy to follow the ins and outs. It looks like one of those management says "we have met your demands" union says "you bloody have not met our demands".

According to cuddly Ken all staff have been assured that their pensions will be fine and there will be no redundancies as fallout from Metronet going to back to whatever nether hell they sprang from. On the other hand I'd want those assurances written in letters of fire on tablets of stone if I were Bob.

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

go go action Bob Crow


Ordinarily (and a fellow Trade Union-ist) I'd agree... except Comrade Bob seems somewhat reluctant to explain to t'Management why this strike is going ahead when all of the TU's demands have been met - firm assurances have been given over jobs, pensions, terms and conditions, etc of all Metronet staff as to their continued and future employment.

Or could it possibly be that there is a deeper 'cause' driving this action....


Oh... and Tubelines is unaffected... so the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines should all be running normally... well, as 'normally' as they usually run . Expect them to be rather busy though.

The rest will be not running, probably until Friday morning.

Personally, despite working for LUL, I pretty much take the bus most days... a much more pleasant way of getting around and often as quick as the tube.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

What's the situation going to be on the Piccadilly between Rayner's Lane and Uxbridge? I though the tracks there were Metronet, so would be affected, but there seems to be no confirmation either way. And what's going to happen to the Chiltern services if there's a signal failure between Amersham and Rickmansworth?

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

What's the situation going to be on the Piccadilly between Rayner's Lane and Uxbridge? I though the tracks there were Metronet, so would be affected

Yes, those are Metronet metals, so I'd expect the Picc's Uxbridge service to be curtailed, probably only running as far up as South Harrow. (but obviously check in the morning)

Amersham - Ricky affecting Chilterns... hmmm yes, definitely a possibility. Chiltern themselves have not mentioned it on their website http://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/content.php?ID=399 other than stating that Ricky station itself will be closed until 10am each day (not sure why though... we roster LUL operational staff there 24/7...)

A simple signal failure can be worked around (in accordance with the Working Manual), but something more complex would most likely cause Chilterns a big headache.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

The National Rail website says: "Chiltern Railways services, which operate on the London Underground Metropolitan Line, should not be affected by this action." So either they've got some sort of fix in place, or they're crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.

[steer.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the demands that TU made (guarantee of no effects on pensions and job losses) and the promises that Ken made (guarantee of no effects on pensions and job losses for the period of administration) don't meet up.

Clarification from those who understand better welcome.

Fortunately for me, I walk/cycle most places but I need the central line this evening.

[djm4]

I suspect that Bob Crow may be looking up 'unequivocal' in the same dictionary as Ian Paisley used to when talking about guarantees from the IRA.

On Ken's side, I've noticed that Ken's socialist credentials slip quickly the moment that anyone threatens to rain on his parade. And shutting down the tube network in London for three days is most definitely raining on his parade.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you see that Ken's done in this situation that is unsocialist -- or was it just a cheap crack at him for no good reason.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

No-one - NO-ONE - has a guarantee of no job losses etc in perpetuity, which is what Bob Crow is demanding. Which, when you think about it for a nanosecond or two, is insane.

[steer.livejournal.com]

No-one - NO-ONE - has a guarantee of no job losses etc in perpetuity

The tragedy is that people have come to see this as a good thing. God... it's like we're turning into americans.

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

It's been a standard demand from the RMT for many years (even pre-Comrade Bob) and LUL management (and my department) have bent over backwards trying to meet that demand, with the result that arguably LUL is overstaffed at operational levels (train and station staff) - especially when compared to other comparable urban transport providers around the globe, even accounting for the age and poor state of the Tube infrastructure.

We are currently having a real struggle to get the TUs to accept that, following the introduction of Oyster, demand for a ticket office service has fallen dramatically - we'd like to redeploy the staff freed up by this to other customer-facing roles (still stations-based), but are being prevented from doing so by spurious arguments about safety and the apparent need to only provide info from behind a window >.>

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Crow is asking for the impossible. He wants guarantees about jobs and pensions. He's been given those for the period of administration, but that's not good enough. But neither the administrators nor TfL are in a position to make promises about what the new owners of Metronet will do.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Unless I'm wrong it's a PPP so whoever is in control of the PPP can legitimately make it part of the conditions of whichever private company wishes to bid for it. There were considerable such conditions built in when Metronet took on the role. For example one of the conditions was that Metronet could not develop driverless trains (which as a union person I think one thing and as a technology person I think another thing).

I would guess that the negotiating stickyness is working out such conditions which would not be too onerous to put off a new buyer.

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

For example one of the conditions was that Metronet could not develop driverless trains (which as a union person I think one thing and as a technology person I think another thing).

Well technically, we already have them (indeed, have had them from 1967, but don't tell anyone ^_^) - the Victoria Line doesn't really need drivers, the trains start, accelerate, decelerate and stop by way of coded electronic pulses - all the 'driver' does is open and shut the doors and tell the system the train is ready to start - the DLR developed this so the 'driving cab' wasn't required and the door open/close/'ready to start' could be done at any of the passenger doors.

The Central Line also uses a more modern version between White City and Leytonstone - yes, we are paying our some of our cossetted drivers upwards of £40k to sit and push a few buttons (and yes... I know it's more involved than that, I've done the job) on some of the best employment conditions in the UK railway industry.


LUL's TUPE rules for staff transferred to another company are among the best in the country, significantly over and above what is required by law, yet still Bob and the boys complain...

Hmmm... perhaps they are simply protecting their own jobs... "ere lads, we need to create sum bovver, uvverwise we can't justify our own existance..."

[steer.livejournal.com]

Oh, indeed, the technology has existed for a long long time but a friend who has worked as a technical consultant for metronet for five years told me they were under a specific contractual obligation not to build anything that would advance driverless trains on the tube system.

on some of the best employment conditions in the UK railway industry

Well, whatever people think about Bob Crow, it is good to hear that he gets results.

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Crow is asking for the impossible.

Nothing new there... the RMT (and ASLEF) have in recent times always demanded the impossible - I sometimes get to advise high level negotiations between the TUs and LUL Management and they (the TUs) seem reluctant to accept that this is the 21st Century and things have moved on since the 1970s....

Whereas there always used to be unrealistic/'impossible' starting points on either side, with room and willingness to negotiate to a compromise, just of late the TUs (most notably the RMT) seem to have forgotten this business of 'negotiation' and 'compromise' :/

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Whereas there always used to be unrealistic/'impossible' starting points on either side, with room and willingness to negotiate to a compromise
Well, it is the traditional way to go about negotiation ... start implausible, and see how plausible you have to get ...

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

Well, it is the traditional way to go about negotiation ... start implausible, and see how plausible you have to get ...

Oh indeed, except when one party simply will not move from their implausible starting point.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Well, notwithstanding Steer's point that conditions about jobs could be imposed upon the new owners if those in charge of the PPP really wanted to, Crow does seem to me to be a throwback to the worst years of 70s union intransigence (when union unwillingness to compromise was one factor in leading lots of working class people to vote for Margaret Thatcher). He gives a very good impression of someone for whom feeding his own ego is as important as representing his members' interests.

On the other hand, the amount of support in the vote rather suggests that RMT members are angry.

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

This just received by internal bulletin:

Metronet strike action

It now appears that strike action called by the RMT, at Metronet BCV and SSL, will go ahead.

Following discussions this morning, members of the TSSA and Unite unions at Metronet will now not be taking any strike action this week.

There is unlikely to be any service on Bakerloo, Central, Victoria, Waterloo & City, District, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines during strike action.

Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines will be running, although we expect them to be very crowded.


:/

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Cheers dude.

That was quick....

[duoinchains.livejournal.com]

District, H&C and Circle already badly affected and showing as 'Severe Delays'

[barakta]

Interesting comments on the details - thanks guys.

What's pissed me off the most is not so much the strike, but the complete lack of useful coherent information. On the TFL website there was nothing remotely useful until about 14:00 today.

I don't care how hard TfL is working to avoid strike action, I'd actually like more information about what is likely to happen if X Y Z strike and what we can do about it. TfL could have provided that information over a week ago and didn't. It would have been in TfL's interest to provide that information rather than being uselessly vague and "It's not our faulty" about it.

All the TfL phonelines were engaged, or had recorded messages which were too fast for my typetalk operators to type but seemed to be saying "due to the high number of calls bugger off to our website or call number-what's-always-engaged"... Useless!

Where you cannot provide a service, you mitigate that a great deal with information, good, clear, accurate information. Contingency or predicted information would have allowed me to have arranged time off last week, or alternative working arrangements without my manager getting annoyed with my reasonable request to work from home.