After London Underground bosses make guarantees on raft of safety and staffing issues

Strike action which would have brought the tube system to a complete standstill for 72 hours has been suspended after lengthy talks between tube bosses and the unions "yielded guarantees on a raft of safety and staffing issues".

The RMT claim that faced with the prospect of three days of strike action from 18:30 on Sunday 6th April, London Underground abandoned plans the union described as a fundamental attack on Tube safety standards and casualisation of safety critical work.

London Underground is understood to have dropped its plan to retain the use of agency staff and 'mobile station supervisors', has frozen plans to close or reduce opening times of ticket offices and has accepted that all safety critical duties at Heathrow T5 will be undertaken by LUL staff.

The company has also pledged to ensure that all station staff are directly employed and fully trained to LUL safety standards, and to honour an agreement that will ensure that existing skilled signallers are offered jobs at new service control centres.

"We were told that agency and security staff and the crazy concept of mobile station supervisors were models for the future, but we now have a guarantee that there will be proper supervision and that the current use of agency and security staff during traffic hours will be brought to an end," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today (Thursday 3rd April).

"Our members have blocked changes that would have undermined the Tube's excellent safety standards, and despite the usual media vilification I hope Tube users will recognise that we have successfully defended their safety."

April 3, 2008