The latest industrial action on the London Underground is about much deeper issues than ticket office closures and Bob Crow
London's latest Tube strike is, according to the city's well-known mayor, as simple to explain as it is pointless and deranged. Boris Johnson has assured his Telegraph readers that the whole thing is the fault of Bob Crow, leader of the Rail Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT). If only Bad Old Bob would recognise the futility of his behaviour, Good Old Boris complains. If only he'd appreciate that a new technology revolution on the Tube is "essential if we are to keep modernising and investing in the system."
Such propaganda pushes at an open door of public opinion which, unsurprisingly, welcomes a Tube strike like it greets a bout of flu and has been media-trained to regard Crow as Satan's spawn (much as it's been fed endless guff about "driverless" trains). Johnson's rote rot is also extremely boring, a clamour of clichés that has not grown any subtler with age. But it's a good departure point for exploring what's really at the heart of the dispute - the labyrinthine power struggles over the London Underground network and the deep-lying implications of Johnson's vision for its future.
Let's deal with the Crow-bashing first. The big, giggly in-joke shared by Tube unions, management and clued-in politicians alike is that Crow is actually considered a straightforward, if hard-nosed, operator with whom it is possible to do business. A companion view is that he is, at least to some extent, the prisoner of an executive and activists strongly influenced by, shall we say, the more specialised sectors of the Outer Left.
Crow himself might disagree with that, but Johnson and the Tory media's personalised attacks on him also obscure the rather important fact that there are two Tube unions pursuing this dispute, not just Crow's. Johnson's Telegraph article neglected to even mention the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA), which represents a big chunk of the workforce in question, no doubt because it is far harder to smear as organised labour's equivalent of a cockney headbutt.
It's telling that these two organisations, which can be very impolite about each privately, are standing shoulder to shoulder. The mayor says the strike affects to be about ticket office closures when it is really "politically motivated" union "muscle-flexing." But he's the one playing pretend. He knows as well as both unions – or should do - that there's a much bigger and longer game afoot.
Most ticket offices would have been history long ago, and very likely without a strike, had Ken Livingstone retained the mayoralty in 2008. He'd produced plans to get shot of lots of them, prompting Johnson to campaign as their stout protector - a position he's been abandoning in crafty instalments ever since.
The union top brass, for the most part, aren't daft about these things. They recognise perfectly well that new technology brings change. But the most important thing for them - and, ultimately, passengers too – is that change helps their members rather than hurts them, and that the number of staff working at Underground stations is protected as far as possible along with those peoples' skills and their morale.
Their argument is that as well as ultimately shedding at least 750 of their members – a hefty percentage of the 5,700 London Underground (LU) says it employs at present – an ensuing restructuring will downgrade many remaining jobs and the safety of passengers in the process. They claim that LU's plans will, for example, entail some station supervisors – senior personnel with the authority to switch off the power, go on to the tracks and organise station evacuations – becoming responsible for five or six stations instead of one, while station control room and multi-functional assistants (SCRAs and SAMFs) will be reduced to lower ranks. Attacks on wages and pensions, they allege, will come next unless a stand is taken now.
They also question LU's guarantee that every station will remain staffed, saying there's already a difference between what the work rosters say and what actually occurs. A picture is painted of an increasingly crowded service with fewer people to ensure it runs smoothly and securely - people whose pay and career progression prospects will have been reduced, with negative knock-on effects for the quality of service provided. You may or may not find this canvas convincing, but it deserves at least a considered look.
Management, of course, tells a different story. Transport for London, of which LU is part and whose board Johnson chairs, insists that passengers – or "customers" as they prefer it – will actually receive more rather than less help and reassurance than before, thanks to improved, hand-held kit and station personnel being more visible and mobile. Whilst acknowledging that sickness or rest breaks can result in smaller, quieter stations sometimes having no member of staff, they say that such occasions are very few. In response to the unions' restructuring concerns, a TfL spokesperson tells me that future changes will:
Result in more staff taking management responsibility for a lower number of stations, with more staff taking a greater level of ownership and responsibility at the local level for our stations.
The devils, you might have gleaned, are in the nuances. Perhaps these will yet enable accommodations on all sides. It seems plainer, however, that Johnson and at least some TfL bosses are playing rougher than during the last series of strikes over station staff jobs. That is certainly the impression of an informed onlooker from a Tube union uninvolved in this dispute and of a TfL employee who contacted me yesterday complaining that wrongful pressure was being applied in the search for personnel to fill in for striking staff, with those declining being asked to provide reasons. A TSSA source tells me he's received many such complaints.
TfL has flatly denied that such activity is taking place, and says that over 1,000 of its people, including from LU, have stepped forward to be strike day "ambassadors" – a term formerly used for Olympics volunteers. One TSSA official, insisting that few of these individuals are actually qualified for station work, described this as Johnson cynically appropriating the spirit of the Games in order to rebrand strike-breakers. "There's not a lot of trust on either side," he concluded of the dispute as a whole, with sledgehammer understatement. "This is the thin end of a union-busting wedge."
Meanwhile, Johnson has renewed his calls to make it harder for Tube unions to strike. The mayor, ever the opportunist, knows how to pander to audience prejudice, not least as found among his kindred spirits of the Tory right. Who's the politically-motivated, muscle-flexer now?
Boris Johnson
Trade unions
Bob Crow
Transport policy
Transport
Dave Hill
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