London Underground announce coordinated strikes with the RMT over a long running bitter dispute – London Business News | London Wallet

In a long running bitter dispute over pensions and job conditions London Underground workers are to strike later this month.

Aslef said that London Underground are “ignoring the current agreed” procedures as they are pushing through with “detrimental changes.”

Alsef members will walk out on 26 until 28 July which is coordinated strike with members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union.

RMT members are set to strike from 23 until 28 July and there will be a strike or walkout every day until 24 July in a similar dispute, they have announced.

Finn Brennan, Aslef’s full-time organiser on London Underground, said, “We take action only when needed. Unfortunately, the last few weeks have shown that London Underground management are determined to try to push through detrimental changes – despite trade union opposition – if they think they can get away with it.

“They have already announced that they intend to start training managers in August on a new attendance procedure, and will implement it from January, ignoring the current agreed procedure.

“This new procedure would mean no right to representation or appeal at stage one of the disciplinary process and the length of all warnings would be doubled from 26 to 52 weeks.

“All sickness longer than one week would be regarded as ‘long term’ meaning that a manager can send a driver to redeployment without any further meeting. After just six weeks in deployment a driver can be, as they put it, ‘terminated’.

“Management also want to force through their plans for what they call ‘trains modernisation’.

“They want unrestricted remote booking on and off, driving shifts up to 10 hours long, ‘flexible cover’ weeks in every roster, and fixed links to be scrapped.

“That would make it impossible for Tube train drivers to organise their lives outside work or to have an effective change-over system.

“Their aim is an entirely flexible workforce with all existing agreements replaced – allowing them to cut hundreds more jobs and forcing those of us who remain to work harder for longer.

“To protect our pensions, working conditions, and agreements, our members are ready to act.”