Wednesday 21 January 2015


I’m not at work this week but it appears that there is a bulletin doing the rounds appealing to RMT members to vote against strike action in support of the Northern Line TOp Alex McGuigan and in a strange twist JNP operations director Nigel Holness is now claiming that McGuigan actually admitted that he had been drinking before he booked on for duty.  As yet I’ve not seen any response from RMT but if he had been drinking then surely the urine sample – discarded by LU without testing – would have provided a positive reading.  Curiouser and curioser……

3 comments:

  1. This not strictly a train staff issue as any member of staff can be tested, so I don't understand why only us Drivers are being balloted, after all we were all balloted over the ticket office closures, because the RMT said it effected us all,or was is because we have the strength to win as no trains no Underground service. I now feel were being 'used' last year.

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  2. Remember the trouble with the two RMT drivers a few years back? The assault on their union activities affected everyone, including ASLEF. Who did the RMT ballot? You guessed it. Just the drivers.

    http://rmtlondoncalling.org.uk/node/2110

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  3. Hello Anonymous (or Anonymoui if you are two different people)

    I blogged about this at the time and rather than "union activities" Eamon Lynch was sacked for an "operational error" while Arwyn Thomas for an alleged assault on a manager. As these were two individual cases I don’t think RMT could ballot all staff but they did ask station staff to support the strike and if memory serves the Bakerloo Line was completely shut down in the Pipe.

    “Ticket office closures" is misleading, it’s a complete reorganisation of station staffing and it will affect us when we need assistance. In the original plan at some stations we’d have only had a CSA to assist with any problem rather than a SS, thanks to RMT we’ll now get an slightly upgraded SAMF. I think RMT can ballot everyone because this isn’t an individual case but as no ASLEF members are directly affected we can’t.

    Regardless it does seem that a lot of RMT TOps feel they are being used for disputes that don’t affect them, perhaps that was why ASLEF’s strike on the Central Line last year was so effective while RMT’s strike over station staff wasn’t.

    If anyone can clarify the procedure on who can be balloted for what I would be grateful

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