The RMT has said that it is preparing to ballot driver members on the Jubilee Line for ‘action short of a strike in a dispute over attempts by management to ride roughshod over agreed safety procedures.’
The drivers’ union is already carrying out strikes on the London Underground this month and in June over the ‘victimisation’ of two sacked drivers.
The RMT say that ‘as a direct result of the continuing failures and breakdowns of the operating system on the Jubilee Line, a legacy of the tube privatisation fiasco, tube bosses are now under instruction from the top to ignore currently agreed safety procedures to try and short-cut the clearage of blockages on the tracks.’
‘It is the failure to follow agreed procedures in full, and to issue proper briefings to drivers expected to operate this major change from agreed procedures, that has triggered the decision to ballot RMT driver members on the Jubilee Line for action short of a strike.’
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:
“We know that the high-profile spate of failures and breakdowns on the Jubilee Line is driving this attempt to short-cut the consultation machinery and safety procedures and we will not allow that to happen.
“The solution to the growing problems on the Jubilee Line is to tackle the core faults with the fleet and operating systems that the failure of tube privatisation has lumbered us with – cutting corners on safety procedures is a guaranteed recipe for making a bad situation even worse.
“It’s our members’ anger at the cavalier way that this issue has been dealt with that has triggered this ballot for action short of a strike and we hope that management will see sense and pull this back to allow full risk assessment and proper briefing of operators to take place.”
