The People Bulletin

Londoners faced the first of another series of 24-hour Tube strikes at 5pm, Monday 6 September 2010.

The Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) unions are fighting the prospect of having fewer employees at stations, saying security could be compromised for passengers. With most Londoners using Oyster cards, the demand for ticket office staff has substantially reduced. The Department for Transport’s £3bn per year budget for Transport for London (TfL) looks likely to be reduced by as much as 40% in the Whitehall savings drive, so staffing of ticket offices no longer used by Tube travellers is an obvious target.

Back at the beginning of August, TSSA general secretary, Gerry Doherty called the ticket-office cuts ‘the tip of the iceberg’ if £1bn was cut from the TfL budget, because it had already stopped further capital spending.

The first 24-hour walkout took place at 1700 hours on Monday 6 September and further strikes are planned for October and November.

The issue of safety to passengers (the RMT’s main argument for preserving the 800 jobs – something general secretary Bob Crow reiterated on the picket line at Kings Cross) was debunked by the Office of Rail Regulation that said it was satisfied with London Underground’s arrangements.

London employers have faced exactly the same absence management issues as they did at the beginning of the during the snow chaos.  In The People Bulletin’s story ‘Cold snap or quantitative freezing – the cost of snow chaos’  the helpful guide from Pinsent Masons still holds good. While flexibility regarding home working and adjustments to arrival and departure times are all sensible things for employers to offer, the fact remains that employees are obliged to attend the office unless they are sick, on holiday or on parental leave, etc, so the onus is on them to come to work, even if there is a tube strike. If the office is open and the employee cannot get into work because there is no alternative form of transport available to them, this absence is technically unauthorised and there is no obligation to pay them.