Disputes continue - even after 'agreement'

Last October a series of strikes on the Tube was called off when, with hours to go, union leaders thought they had reached a deal on pay rates for passenger train drivers.

They had been involved for months in a pay row between the drivers of passenger trains - who earn £29,000 - and the drivers of engineering trains - who are on £33,000 - and this dispute continues today.

The union was claiming an increase of £1,600 to close the gap, according to London Underground. This amounted to an extra 5.7 per cent. Taken together with the four per cent increase awarded to all 16,000 LU employees the total rise for passenger train drivers came to 9.7 per cent.

Bob Crow, RMT assistant general secretary, said at the time: "We have always accepted in full the recommendation of independent mediator Frank Burchill on pay and conditions and we are pleased that LU has now seen sense and agreed to do the same. Professor Burchill recommended a timetable to deal with the pay differential between engineering train drivers and passenger train drivers and LU has agreed to that - with parity likely to be phased in from April, with full parity by October 2002."

Within hours LU denied it had agreed any such thing. As the Evening Standard revealed the next day, Tube commuters still faced the risk of yet more strikes.

At the time an LU spokeswoman said: "Bob Crow has got it wrong. We have not agreed with RMT, or anybody else, a 9.7 per cent pay increase for train drivers.

"We have done what we said we were going to do. That is to give a four per cent increase to all employees and then to review whether or not there are any anomalies in pay for drivers. That is what was recommended by the mediator."

The spokeswoman emphasised that there was "no commitment by this management to pay a penny more than four per cent to anyone".