On Sep 3, 3:53 pm, Barry Salter wrote:
From the RMT website:

MORE THAN 2,300 RMT members at collapsed Tube privateer Metronet will
begin a 72-hour strike at 18:00 tonight after the company and its
administrator failed to give the unequivocal guarantees on jobs,
transfers and pensions that the union is seeking.

A second 72-hour strike is scheduled to start at the same time next
Monday, September 10.

"We have been seeking simple, unqualified guarantees from Metronet and
its administrator that there will be no job losses, forced transfers or
pensions cuts, and we have not had them," RMT general secretary Bob Crow
said today.

"The efforts the Mayor and TfL have put in to try to broker a deal have
been welcome, but the problem for all of us remains that Metronet and
its administrator are the employer, and the qualified assurances they
have given cover only the period of administration.

"It is astonishing that the administrator can decide all sorts of
things, including who will take over the PPP contracts, but is unable to
give an unequivocal guarantee that the jobs of the people who will
actually deliver the Tube's upgrades will be safe.

"We have been told that the pension-fund trustees will be "urged" to
ensure that employees lose no pension during the period of
administration, but no amount of 'urging' amounts to a guarantee, and
this is not a matter for the trustees in any case.

"It is the employer's duty to ensure that pension provision will be no
less favourable than before the PPP, as promised by the deputy prime
minister, and what we need from the employer is the simple guarantee
that there will be no reduction in pension rights, past, present or future.

"We said from the start that our members were not prepared to pay for
the collapse of Metronet with their jobs and pensions, and that remains
our bottom line.

"What our members want is to be transferred to a public-sector
organisation, and that is the only way in which their jobs and pensions
can be protected," Bob Crow said.

And given the thousands of workers who have had their pensions stolen
when their employers went into liquidation where was Bob Crowe then.
Now he wants the very same ripped off workers to fund his guarantee
through taxes.
The Parliamentary Ombudsman stated that the Government was guilty of
maladministration over the Equitable Life debacle nd the Government's
response was to stick two fingers up. So will somebody tell Bob Crowe
there are NO F**KING GUARANTEES.
Kevin