LUL Job losses

[xc170]

Hello, just found this on the Gaurdian website

London Underground is to axe 1,000 jobs this year as part of a drive to slash costs by £2.4bn.

Transport for London, the mayor's transport authority, warned last year that hundreds of jobs were under threat as it balances its books to pay for the £16bn Crossrail project and to plug a multibillion funding gap in the tube network.

London Underground, a TfL subsidiary, said no tube drivers or frontline staff would be affected by the cuts, which it hopes to achieve through a hiring freeze or dropping contract workers. Its parent added that, on top of the 1,000 cuts on the tube, "several hundred" jobs will also go at TfL, which employs a total of 20,000 people.

"No frontline or operational staff will be affected," TfL said. "No services for passengers will be affected by this. The roles we are talking about are back office posts such as finance, HR and legal."

The announcement shocked trade union leaders, who are already campaigning against more than 1,500 job cuts by rail franchise owners. "Any attempt to impose compulsory redundancies on our members will be met with a ballot for industrial action," said Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT union.

Speaking in November last year, the London mayor, Boris Johnson, defended his decision to shelve £3.5bn of transport schemes in the capital, including the Thames Gateway bridge. Warning that job cuts were also on the way, he said: "These cuts need to be seen in the context of the biggest investment in London transport for a generation."

However, Johnson has also admitted to writing to the Treasury and demanding further money to plug a funding gap in the underground network, implying that a recent £39bn settlement up to 2017 will not be enough to cover TfL's spending requirements.

Bit of bad news isnt it!

Adam

 

[Daniel]

Knew it was coming :P

I was speaking to the woman who was my recruitment consultant a month or so ago, she explained that as metronet staff are now employed by LU, we now have duplicate roles, e.g. they had people who sorted out rotas, and so did we, so we have two people for one job, someone's gotta go. However they had signal technicians, we had train operators, so no duplications there, no redundancies in that field, no front line staff gone...

Hence, if the RMT call a strike as suggested in the papers today, tbh I doubt I would join them despite being a member. Agreed they should be investing in transport but not sacking, but they should be expanding not duplicating.

 

[xc170]

I get the feeling that alot of rail companies not just LUL are using this rescesion as a mony saving excuse to boost there profits:roll:

Adam

 

[mbonwick]

No frontline jobs lost.

What does that tell us about the amount of unnecessary people employed?

 

[DavyCrocket]

TfL have openly said that they wish to save £2.4bn over the next few years and have also said that these losses are not due to recession, but down to effiency.

To be honest, 55 Broadway and Windsor House are full of pen pushers, in non jobs, shuffling paper and patronising the operational staff. There will be no difference, they could probably get rid of another 1000 from LU then goodness knows how many from TfL!

As to strikes, I really doubt that there will be any for these people. It is these sort of office people that came out onto the stations and worked outside of their roles during industrial action around safety and job losses, so I see the irony. Though it is sad that people are being made redundant.