On-strike Underground staff: 'ticket officers are akin to public safety' (From Haringey Independent)

On-strike Underground staff: 'ticket officers are akin to public safety'

5:26pm Tuesday 7th September 2010 in

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ANGRY London Underground staff in Haringey said the public service should be keeping jobs not cutting them in a time of high unemployment and hard economic times.

From picket lines across Haringey including near Seven Sisters Tube and train station and the Northumberland Park depot, workers called on their bosses to reconsider proposals that put jobs at threat.

The demonstrators said that reducing opening hours at ticket offices was not only a serious safety concern, but also did not nothing to benefit the economy.

Glenroy Watson, chairman of the RMT's Finsbury Park branch, said: "Safety is the main concern here. Cutting hours at ticket offices puts the public at risk it's as simple as that. There are some jobs that cannot be done by CCTV or a computer and one of those jobs is patrolling the station especially late at night.

"The bosses say that reducing the opening hours will save the public money and that because we're coming out of a recession we need to stimulate the economy by encouraging people to spend. But who can spend when they don't have a job? If you can't rely on a public service to help secure jobs, who can you rely on."

He added that London Underground bosses emphasis on the huge numbers of people who were inconvenienced by the strike was evidence that the capital's Tube and train network was as popular as ever and was still making enough money to warrant extended opening hours.

At the Westerfield Road picket line, outside Pleiades House, angry staff had been protesting from 5am and are expected to stay there until 9pm tonight.

Mike Brown, LU's Managing Director, "RMT leadership has chosen to disrupt Londoners for no good reason. The safety argument they deployed – which has never been raised in any formal forum - is completely without foundation. It is simple scaremongering designed to mask their wish to strike.

"Londoners will doubtless find it incredible that the two union leaderships have pursued this action when they have been given cast-iron assurances that the staffing changes we are making come with no compulsory redundancies, that every station that currently has a ticket office will retain one, and that every station will remain staffed at all times."