We believe that LU have began using our LU staff assessors and trainers to train and assess outside staff track contract workers to be track patrollers (T001) with up to 40 such contract workers are currently being trained.
This is contrary to a long standing agreement at Track & Signals Functional Council that said only LU staff would do track patrols. Further to that agreement; at the T&S Functional Council talks on Night Tube, we also had LU’s agreement that contract staff would not do safety critical roles including track patrolling on Night Tube related shifts.
So this latest development of training contract workers as track patrollers not only breaks our functional level agreements, but is an unmistakable indication that LU intend to use contract workers to patrol tracks on Night Tube shifts, during industrial action and even on normal engineering hours shifts thereby undermining our trade union, our LU staff members work, employment and effective defensive strike action.
The matter is being raised with LU immediately and at the ACAS night Tube talks set for the coming Tuesday 28th July.
The RMT will always welcome employing more internal staff to undertake core Safety Critical tasks, however, will not stand by and see our main work being outsourced potentially without a fight