Glasgow Subway workers strike

Glasgow’s Subway was totally shutdown on Wednesday (June 25) – as drivers and station staff mounted the underground railway’s first strike in 20 years.

Staff are in dispute with the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport over working conditions, understaffing and inadequate overtime and sick pay. After the latest offer from the employer was rejected last weekend, staff began three days of strike action on Wednesday.

The Subway, which is the third oldest underground railway in the world, has not seen a strike since 2005.

Unusually for the public sector, Subway workers do not receive full sick pay – and are instead paid just 81 per cent of their wages when they fall ill. And staff receive no enhancement for working above their contracted hours.

Picketing outside Broomloan depot in Govan, a Subway driver told UniteLive, “Over the years, people haven’t been treated properly, so they’ve not wanted to do overtime, which has resulted in other staff being asked to come in to do overtime. It’s voluntary but people almost feel obliged to come in and do it, and the system depends on it to run a normal service.

“In other parts of SPT, if you come in on your day off, you get time and a half or double time or whatever it is. Whereas on the Subway, the drivers and the station staff just get the basic rate. So again, we’re trying to get on par with our peers.”

At the adjacent Govan station, pickets said staff had been handed more responsibilities over the course of the Subway’s modernisation programme – but had not been compensated for this. The £289m upgrade has included a brand new fleet, station refurbishments and a new signalling and control system.

But staff feel “left behind” by the programme.

“We want more pay for the added responsibilities we’ve been getting,” a station assistant said. “And we feel like we’re not being recognised for that. By giving us now better pay and conditions, we feel as though we’re being eradicated, asked to do more and more things, time and time again, without any compensation for it.

“We’re all for accommodating how to help our management, but this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. We’ve had enough, and enough is enough.

“I do feel as though the workers have been left behind when it comes to our pay and conditions. For us to wait till management are in the right position is not good enough. They tell us that they value us, but I don’t think they really do.”

Across the Clyde at Partick station (pictured above), a busy picket line won support from passengers, passers-by and cars honking their horns. “For 20 years the pay, terms and conditions have not really changed,” a Unite workplace rep told UniteLive. “They’re trying to modernise the subway, they’re going to have to modernise the pay, terms and conditions for us.

“The staff are really angry about it now, when everyone else is on better pay, terms and conditions than you, and you’ve not really moved at all.”

Subway workers also report being called in to work shifts at last minute, damaging their work-life balance.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said, “Unite’s Glasgow subway members are fed up with SPT’s half measures and failure to deliver decent working conditions.

“It has had every opportunity to sort out understaffing, shift pay and working hours. The workers have rightly said enough is enough because the subway is running on empty. SPT know what it needs to do to resolve the dispute but has entirely failed to act.”

Further walk-outs are planned for Friday 27 and Saturday 28 June.

Text and photos by Conrad Landin