[originally posted to uk.railway]
[x-posted to uk.transport.london]

AndyPandy wrote:

Rail workers in strike threat

3 hours ago

Thousands of rail workers at four companies are to be balloted for
strikes in disputes over job cuts and industrial relations.

The move by the Rail Maritime and Transport Union threatens the worst
outbreak of disruption on the railways for years including the
prospect of strikes on busy commuter routes into London.

The union said it will co-ordinate a ballot among more than 3,500
workers at South West Trains, First Capital Connect and National
Express East Anglia over job cuts while around 300 of its members at
London Overground will vote on whether to take industrial action over
claims that industrial relations have broken down at the company.

The source of the above is this PA piece:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukp...C8lry3YmtrpFRw

There's a bit more in this Independent article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...s-1626187.html

Being very parochial, I'm particularly interested in the apparent
problems at LOROL (the operator of the London Overground) - the
Independent article finished with this line:
"The RMT claimed a complete breakdown of industrial relations at
London Overground."

I'm a bit surprised with this, as I haven't heard of any specific
threats to LOROL jobs, indeed LOROL employed lots of extra people on
assuming control of the ex-Silverlink Metro route in large part
because this was what TfL wanted (TfL has a very prescriptive contract
with LOROL for operating the LO network) and my understanding was that
one of their big intentions was to positively motivate the staff,
bring them all together as a team, improving working conditions, lots
of stuff like that (similar to what Chris Green did when Network
Southeast came into existence).

TfL are making a number of budget cuts - in part because it was always
on the cards (both Crossrail and bringing Metronet back in house are
significant elements), in part because of the new Mayor's intention to
slim things down (his 'value for money' mantra) - so are TfL in fact
considering plans to cut staff on the LO network? That'd be a great
shame if so - the whole 'London Overground' project is still in the
early stages, but comprehensively staffing LO stations is one of the
changes that passenger feedback has indicated as being very popular.

Incidentally, I did overhear some grumbles from some of the LO station
staff at an NLL station recently - the NLL service had fallen apart
because of a 'failed train', so I went up to one of them and said "Is
it one of your's that's broken down or someone else's?", to which he
replied "It's a broken down freight train, nine times out of ten
that's the cause of our problems, our trains aren't generally aren't
the one's that are breaking down" - I couldn't have been less
surprised by that, as it totally fits with my past experience of the
NLL. I then took out my mobile and was waiting for someone to answer
my call when the employee I'd been speaking to turned to his colleage
and said something along the lines of "I don't know why I'm bloody
well defending this useless company [LOROL], they don't deserve it",
which did somewhat surprise me - it certainly wasn't a comment from
someone who was buying into any sense of collective ownership of the
whole endeavour!

So, what's up at LOROL?