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Tube staff accused of ‘political’ strike
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e84372be-6d42-11dd-857b-0000779fd18c.html
By Andrew Taylor in London

Published: August 18 2008 20:24 | Last updated: August 18 2008 20:24

London Underground maintenance workers threatening to strike this week were accused on Monday of launching a politically motivated push to return all Tube work to the public sector.

Workers employed by Tube Lines, a private-sector company that maintains the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, plan to stop work for 72 hours from noon on Wednesday. A further 72-hour strike is proposed for September 3.

A similar stoppage at Metronet, which maintains the other Tube lines, brought most of the network to a halt last September. Metronet was taken under public control after it went into administration last summer.

Terry Morgan, Tube Lines’ chief executive, wrote in the London Evening Standard that the latest dispute over pay and conditions reflected the determination of the RMT transport union “to return all Tube work to the public sector by destroying Tube Lines”.

The stoppages had nothing to do with pay and conditions but were a political attack on his company and on Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, who is seeking a no-strike deal with Underground unions, Mr Morgan said.

“Union stewards have told us outright: the RMT wants to bring us down. But destroying us wouldn’t help London,” he said. “The Tube needs our investment and the improvements we are bringing about.”

Mr Morgan said 280 out of 1,000 staff had voted to strike. The RMT said workers had voted by a margin of more than three to one for the stoppages.

The union, which says that Metronet workers have been given a bigger pay rise and enjoy better conditions, admitted that it would like all Tube maintenance to be returned to the public sector eventually but denied that this week’s strike was motivated to achieve that end.

Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, said: “If Terry Morgan doubts that this is an industrial dispute, he should try putting some more money and better conditions on the table.”

The Tube Lines chief should “stop throwing petty insults around” and get round the table to negotiate a solution to the dispute. “We gave Tube Lines notice of our strike action last Wednesday and we have heard nothing from the company since,” said Mr Crow.

The company, a joint venture of Grupo Ferrovial of Spain and Bechtel of the US, has a 30-year contract to maintain and upgrade the three lines. It has offered a one-year deal worth 4.85 per cent or a two-year agreement worth 4.95 per cent in the first year followed by an increase based on the prevailing retail price index plus 0.75 per cent in the second year.

It contends that workers would lose more by striking for a day than they would gain if it matched a 5.1 per cent increase offered to Metronet workers.

Of more concern to Tube Lines is the decision by Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor, to give Metronet employees returning to public-sector control the same benefits as other London Underground staff.

Mr Morgan said the RMT now “thinks that Tube Lines’ employees should get all the same benefits – pensions and free travel – and it is asking for a shorter working week”.

This would add 10 per cent to Tube Lines’ wage bill, “money which would have to be cut from our investment programme”, said Mr Morgan.

“What the RMT is effectively saying is that a private firm should not be allowed to set its own terms and conditions . . . The union is entitled to its view that the Tube should be renationalised but the place to argue that case is in the political arena,” he added.