{"id":53624,"date":"2024-05-04T14:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T13:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=53624"},"modified":"2024-05-03T19:34:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T18:34:21","slug":"war-of-words-erupts-over-london-trams-strike-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=53624","title":{"rendered":"War of words erupts over London Trams strike action"},"content":{"rendered":"

As reported earlier this week, engineers on London Trams will be going on strike from 2000 on Sunday 5th<\/sup> May until 0600 on Thursday 9th<\/sup> May. This will cause major disruption on the network and now just before the strike begins a war of words has erupted between Unite the Union and Transport for London.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To recap the strike has been called over what the union calls a disparity in the wages offered to engineers at London Trams when compared to similar roles at London Underground. They have claimed that staff on the Underground can earn up to \u00a310,000 extra for the same work, with the fact that engineers on the trams are on office worker contracts not helping.<\/p>\n

Strike action had been originally due to take place in March but this was suspended after the union said TfL had promised meaningful talks on the issue. But now there is claim and counterclaim as to just how serious these talks were.<\/p>\n

Bruce Swann, Unite regional officer, said: \u201cTfL is entirely responsible for the disruption that will be caused to passengers. If TfL had stuck to its word and engaged openly and honestly, the Tramlink engineers would not be forced to take strike action. TfL has left these issues to fester for years and the strikes will continue until it resolves them to our members\u2019 satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unite claim that TfL \u201creneged on the initial conditions of the talks, which was if pay disparities were identified a plan would be put in place to bring the impacted roles up to London Underground levels of pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its been said that TfL admitted five London Trams engineering roles have pay disparities and claims that other roles either don\u2019t have these or are too negligible to be considered. Suffice to say Unite did not agree with this but claim that they\u2019d have continued negotiations if TfL was transparent about the criteria it was using to arrive at these conclusions \u2013 and this had not happened.<\/p>\n

For their part TfL said in a statement: \u201cWe would never enter conversations in bad faith and have been open and honest throughout the process. \u00a0We have agreed to work with union colleagues to identify equivalent roles in London Underground, assess any disparity in overall benefits packages, and where agreed take action where appropriate.<\/p>\n

“This will take time and we have asked that this strike action be suspended to allow this to happen. We remain committed to continued dialogue to reach a conclusion and ask the union to suspend this action, which will only cause unnecessary inconvenience for our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The upshot of all this is that strike action will take place as from 2000 on Sunday 5th<\/sup> May which will mean throughout Monday 6th<\/sup>, Tuesday 7th<\/sup> and Wednesday 8th<\/sup> May trams will only run from 0700 to 1800 between Wimbledon and Reeves Corner and East Croydon to Beckenham Junction\/New Addington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As reported earlier this week, engineers on London Trams will be going on strike from 2000 on Sunday 5th May until 0600 on Thursday 9th May. This will cause major disruption on the network and now just before the strike … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53625,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53624\/revisions\/53625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}