Rail unions' anger at snow pay penalty
Feb. 9th, 2009 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
suzyscottdotcomOK, who saw this one coming?
Rail unions' anger at snow pay penalty
LONDON (Reuters) - Rail unions slammed London's transport bosses and Mayor Boris Johnson on Monday because they said staff who failed to get to work during last week's bad weather face having their pay docked.
Heavy snow in the capital last Monday brought much of the capital's transport network to a standstill, with bus services suspended and some underground services closed.
Despite authorities' advising people not to travel, Transport for London said that workers who did not provide a good excuse for failing to show up, or did not do "meaningful" work from home, must book the day as leave or lose pay.
The TSSA and RMT rail unions said the decision was unfair and illogical, and penalised those who lived further away from their place of work.
"We think this is gross hypocrisy on the Mayor's part," said Manuel Cortes, assistant general secretary of the TSSA rail union.
"He cancels all the buses and most of the tube and urges Londoners not to risk trying to get to work in the worst snow storm for a generation. And yet here he is wanting to penalise them because of his own actions."
Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, said: "How a signaller who might live in a snowbound town outside the capital can be expected to do some meaningful work from home is beyond me."
TfL said it appreciated that it was impossible for some people to get to their workplaces because of the weather. But it said 95 percent of staff did get to work, meaning fewer than 100 employees had not.
"The vast majority of our staff made it to work. We're hugely grateful to them for the efforts that they went to get to work as without them we wouldn't have been able to run 80 percent of the Tube network as we did," said a Tfl spokesman.
Rail unions' anger at snow pay penalty
LONDON (Reuters) - Rail unions slammed London's transport bosses and Mayor Boris Johnson on Monday because they said staff who failed to get to work during last week's bad weather face having their pay docked.
Heavy snow in the capital last Monday brought much of the capital's transport network to a standstill, with bus services suspended and some underground services closed.
Despite authorities' advising people not to travel, Transport for London said that workers who did not provide a good excuse for failing to show up, or did not do "meaningful" work from home, must book the day as leave or lose pay.
The TSSA and RMT rail unions said the decision was unfair and illogical, and penalised those who lived further away from their place of work.
"We think this is gross hypocrisy on the Mayor's part," said Manuel Cortes, assistant general secretary of the TSSA rail union.
"He cancels all the buses and most of the tube and urges Londoners not to risk trying to get to work in the worst snow storm for a generation. And yet here he is wanting to penalise them because of his own actions."
Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, said: "How a signaller who might live in a snowbound town outside the capital can be expected to do some meaningful work from home is beyond me."
TfL said it appreciated that it was impossible for some people to get to their workplaces because of the weather. But it said 95 percent of staff did get to work, meaning fewer than 100 employees had not.
"The vast majority of our staff made it to work. We're hugely grateful to them for the efforts that they went to get to work as without them we wouldn't have been able to run 80 percent of the Tube network as we did," said a Tfl spokesman.
"Some staff weren't able to make it to work and they need to demonstrate to us that they did all they could to get to work. We'll look at that on a case-by-case basis."
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison)
