Metronet staff on the London Underground will strike for 48hrs from 10:30am on Monday 28 April said the RMT today (18 April).
The union”s 2,500 members at the failed Tube maintenance firm voted by a margin of more than four to one for industrial action after failing to win written guarantees on their jobs and pension schemes when Metronet contracts are transferred to Transport for London (TfL).
"Despite weeks of detailed talks and positive discussions with the mayor we have still not won the unequivocal written guarantees we are seeking to protect our members' interests," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said. "What we have received has been hedged, qualified and ambiguous.
"The shareholders who walked away from Metronet's corpse are being rewarded with fat PFI contracts, yet the people who have stuck with the job of improving the Tube are supposed to accept uncertainty over their jobs, pensions and conditions.”
A TfL spokesman said it had guaranteed the RMT everything it had asked for, adding that the ”vast majority” of Metronet employees already enjoyed these benefits: "A strike at Metronet is completely unnecessary and will not achieve anything.
"We have an agreement with the trade unions on all these issues, hammered out during the previous dispute, that it was agreed would last through the period of Administration. Metronet remains in Administration.
The RMT is defiant enough to call a strike however, making it clear it wants absolute certainty for its members during this transitional phase - "We have already made it clear that the collapse of Metronet should not be used as a Trojan horse for a two-tier workforce," said Crow.
”Even at this stage the solution to this dispute remains a simple letter away.”
The TfL spokesman said: ”We have no doubt that these issues can be resolved."
Metronet went into administration last July.