Shameful and undemocratic legal challenge by Tube bosses

LONDON UNDERGROUND’S biggest union today expressed outrage at a ‘shameful and undemocratic’ legal challenge by Tube bosses that has forced the re-run of a strike ballot of more than 9,000 RMT members – despite it yielding a five-to-one majority for action.

RMT today said it would re-run the ballot on the same issues of jobs and pay as soon as possible after the union received a detailed legal letter designed purely to undermine the ballot and as a preliminary to a court challenge.

A separate ballot of several hundred RMT members at Transport for London on similar issues, which also yielded an overwhelming majority for action, will also be re-run to ensure that the two disputes can continue to be run in tandem.

“Our members have given their overwhelming verdict on LUL’s plans to cut jobs and pay, but Tube bosses have used anti-union laws to thwart their democratic will,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today

“LUL’s lawyers have leapt on minor discrepancies that cannot possibly have affected the outcome of the ballot.

“RMT, as it always does, conducted the ballot to the best of its ability in accordance with laws that are designed to make it as difficult as possible for working people to take industrial action – and the bigger the ballot the greater scope for lawyers to find fault.

“The facts remain that LUL and TfL want to axe as many as 3,000 jobs and are looking for pay cuts in order to make our members pay for a crisis that is not of their making when their productivity is at an all-time high.

“The only possible response is to re-run the ballots as swiftly as we can and to urge our members to vent their frustration and anger by returning even bigger majorities for action,” Bob Crow said.