Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
Indeed, there are now over 300 people in TfL who are earning over £100,000 a year.
The right-wing papers like to go on about Bob Crow's salary of £145,000 a year, but they're a bit less keen to mention the pay packets of TfL bigwigs. The TfL boss Peter Hendy's salary is huge, but Underground boss Mike "I'm going to fix this for you" Brown trousered a whopping £450,000 last year. Leaving aside the fact that RMT members- and nobody else- pay Crowbar Bob, if his salary is "fat cat" how would they define Mike Brown's?
It's a lot more complex than that, as London Reconnections explain
At the busiest "gateway" stations there are currently 12 people employed. This will change to 13 under the new plans, but two of those people will be "meet and greet" rather than operational. So at every "gateway" station there will be one person who gets demoted.
At the busy "destination" stations staffing levels won't change, other than the ticket clerk now having to work in the concourse.
Most tube stations are classed as "metro" or "local" though. At Metro stations (typically section 12 stations, which can't open without sufficient staffing) there will be a loss of one member of staff. At "local" stations it is even worse. These will now only have one member of staff on the station (with the attendant risks that lone working brings), with one supervisor being delegated to cover six stations. TfL are essentially clearing out the supervisor level, and that's going to have major safety implications.
Interestingly TfL try to hide these significant staffing cuts in their policy documents, focusing on "visible staff presence", because (of course) someone in a ticket office isn't "visible".
It's easy to get volunteers out for a few days in a strike to "prove" that the staff are no longer needed. It isn't so easy when the service is fully operational, especially with the section 12 stations. We're already seeing stations close due to staff shortages on a more regular basis, and lopping 25% of the staffing off most section 12 stations is only going to make this worse. If a staff member is ill that station isn't going to open; if three successive section 12 stations are closed, then the train service is not permitted to run at all.
It's this sort of cutting corners in the deep-level stations that contributed to the Kings Cross fire of 1987. It's a real shame we're going back that way.
The right-wing papers like to go on about Bob Crow's salary of £145,000 a year, but they're a bit less keen to mention the pay packets of TfL bigwigs. The TfL boss Peter Hendy's salary is huge, but Underground boss Mike "I'm going to fix this for you" Brown trousered a whopping £450,000 last year. Leaving aside the fact that RMT members- and nobody else- pay Crowbar Bob, if his salary is "fat cat" how would they define Mike Brown's?
jonmorris0844 said:
It's a lot more complex than that, as London Reconnections explain
At the busiest "gateway" stations there are currently 12 people employed. This will change to 13 under the new plans, but two of those people will be "meet and greet" rather than operational. So at every "gateway" station there will be one person who gets demoted.
At the busy "destination" stations staffing levels won't change, other than the ticket clerk now having to work in the concourse.
Most tube stations are classed as "metro" or "local" though. At Metro stations (typically section 12 stations, which can't open without sufficient staffing) there will be a loss of one member of staff. At "local" stations it is even worse. These will now only have one member of staff on the station (with the attendant risks that lone working brings), with one supervisor being delegated to cover six stations. TfL are essentially clearing out the supervisor level, and that's going to have major safety implications.
Interestingly TfL try to hide these significant staffing cuts in their policy documents, focusing on "visible staff presence", because (of course) someone in a ticket office isn't "visible".
It's easy to get volunteers out for a few days in a strike to "prove" that the staff are no longer needed. It isn't so easy when the service is fully operational, especially with the section 12 stations. We're already seeing stations close due to staff shortages on a more regular basis, and lopping 25% of the staffing off most section 12 stations is only going to make this worse. If a staff member is ill that station isn't going to open; if three successive section 12 stations are closed, then the train service is not permitted to run at all.
It's this sort of cutting corners in the deep-level stations that contributed to the Kings Cross fire of 1987. It's a real shame we're going back that way.
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