Tube staff vote for strike action

There was an over 90% majority vote for strike action in a dispute between the Metronet signal staff and London Underground management over the imposition of new rosters for maintenance workers plus handing over work to external contractors & breaches of agreements. The RMT have described this rather more emotively on their press release and accuse London Underground of "unilaterally ripping up agreements, bulldozing through shift patterns that treat staff like slabs of meat that can be pulled off the shelf when it suits managers and of threatening job security through increased use of outside contractors"


The union leader Bob Crow said, of the LU: "It's their bully-boy management style which has forced us into this dispute."

He continued "LUL seem to be hell bent on confrontation by tearing up the Signals Framework Agreement and by unilaterally introducing new working practices which mean they can make people work what hours they like, when they like."

London Underground are denyiing the union's allegations and their chief maintenance officer, Phil Hufton, said striking over rosters was "ludicrous".

He said: "We are planning to introduce a roster covering 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure planned engineering staff are always available. That agreement already exists, but the RMT is trying to tear it up.

"They should stop threatening industrial action at every opportunity."

As yet it's not been announced when the strike action would take place if the dispute is not resolved.

Update - the first of the Tube strikes started Friday 5th February 2010