Talks between union leaders and Tube bosses have taken place in an effort to resolve a dispute over ticket office staffing, with the RMT planning new strikes next week.
The RMT and TSSA unions met representatives of London Underground at conciliation service ACAS on Tuesday after TfL made a new offer on staffing numbers.
While the TSSA suspended its strike action, the RMT is still threatening strikes by station and revenue staff from Sunday evening (5 February) until Monday morning and Tuesday morning until the early hours of Wednesday.
TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes said London Underground had offered talks ‘to clarify points with their proposals that remain of concern to our reps’.
Last week the RMT confirmed further strike dates in the dispute, following what it said was a failure to make significant progress at previous ACAS talks.
Steve Griffiths, London Underground's chief operating officer, said: 'We have made a proposal to both unions in order to end this dispute. We will be recruiting at least 650 new station staff this year, of which 325 will be additional new roles. We are having further discussions this week to provide clarification on the implementation of these proposals.'
Conservatives on the London Assembly described this as ‘giving in to union demands’, which would cost an extra £17m a year.
Separately, the RMT said Southern rail had confirmed it is planning to strip On Board Supervisors (OBS) on their services of their guard’s safety licence and certification.
The firm introduced the OBS role to replace conductors (guards) as it extended driver only operation (DOO) and has been in talks with drivers union ASLEF for nearly two weeks over the issue.
A Southern spokesperson said: ‘The conductors in question stopped dispatching trains on 1 January so they no longer need to hold those licences and our new On-Board Supervisors are not required to maintain them. This is yet another attempt at mischief-making by the RMT.’
In a separate potential dispute over DOO, the RMT said it welcomed correspondence received from Arriva Northern offering to work out an agreement ‘on the best method of train dispatch and staff safety competencies’.
An RMT spokesman also told Transport Network that it was meeting MerseyRail this week to discuss the train operator’s plans to bring in ‘driver controlled operation’ on new trains.
As Transport Network reported earlier this month, the union had demanded ‘cast-iron assurances’ by 26 January from the two companies around the future role of guards.
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