From tomorrow, ASLEF members across London Underground will receive a referendum paper to make your decision on moving to a 4-day week with a paid meal relief or to remain on a 5-day week with an unpaid meal relief.
For over 30 years, unions on London Underground have been calling for a paid meal relief break and a 4-day week. Now we finally have a concrete offer on the table for train drivers.
The proposal means three rest days rostered every week, giving you an extra day off each week, and 4.5 hours fewer at work each week. That means time and money saved on commuting to and from work every week. It means less fatigue and more time for your family, friends or hobbies.
Your annual leave entitlement does not change. It remains at 7.4 weeks. (A week’s leave will only use up 4 days of your entitlement.) Instead of “banking up” an hour per week on top of your contractual week of 35 hours, rosters will be bases on 34 hours per week, with the additional 5.2 days per year used for non-driving days, including training and personal development.
That means that the average working week reduced from 38.5 hours now to 34 hours per week, a reduction of 4.5 hours. The longest possible working week reduces from 42.5 hours now to 38 hours per week. That means 4.5 hours less at work each week.
Your salary, pension and all other benefits will remain unchanged. Duty changeovers, Syndicates and fixed link rosters will all remain in place. 3 rest days per week will give syndicates more options to group runs of rest days meaning more quality time off.
For the first time, pool drivers will have a rest day that is rostered in advance giving them more ability to plan ahead then they do now.
Of course, the proposal isn’t perfect. Changes to the framework and other agreements will have to be negotiated and agreed at Trains Council including a voluntary overtime and rest day working agreement. Agreements will be similar to those on mainline TOC’s that already work a 4-day week. You can see the full proposal here and the answers to frequently asked questions here.
The reality is that a 4-day week with a paid meal relief was always going to mean compromises. The idea that the company would just give everyone an extra day off and a reduced working week at no cost by recruiting 500 extra drivers is a naïve fantasy. ASLEF has always been honest about that, even if others still are not.
Management had planned to save tens of millions of pounds with “trains modernisation”. That would have meant scrapping all existing local and combine agreements, enforcing remote booking on and off at depots and locations up to 30 mins away, keeping an unpaid meal break, scrapping fixed links and putting pool cover into the roster so that syndicates became unworkable.
We stopped them implementing their plans and now have a proposal for a genuine 4-day week with an undisturbed paid meal relief. This is a once in a generation opportunity to achieve the improvement in quality of life that we have campaigned for over decades.
Your ASLEF local reps, your Executive Committee and Trains Council are supporting a YES vote for a 4-day week with a paid meal relief.
Please use your vote and return your ballot paper by April 10th.
You can join the ASLEF Webinar today at 16.00 on the link below:
Monday 17 March 16:00
Webinar ID: 824 9959 9219
This is open to all Train Operators regardless of union affiliation, to take questions on the 4 day week with paid meal relief proposal.
Finn Brennan
ASLEF District Organiser.
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