The next Tube battle is the hard one

WHATEVER the result of the court case between the mayor and the Government over the public-private partnership (PPP), the Underground needs a radical new approach to its management.

In particular, the question of how best to sort out the catastrophic relationship between the unions and senior managers will have to be answered.

Londoners will not easily forget the days of misery inflicted on them in recent years by random strikes and militancy.

The Tube is a classic unregulated monopoly. Successive governments, Underground managements and the unions have connived against the public to ramp up fares, drive down quality and to use regular industrial unrest to offer - for Tube drivers - some of the most generous manual pay rates in the country. LU recently conceded a "no redundancies" deal with its staff.

Any private, competitive company offering the public the declining quality of service provided by the Tube would have gone bankrupt years ago.

Ministers and civil servants have tolerated this state of affairs since they took over London Transport in 1984. They appointed the senior managers (or appointed the people who did so) who have allowed the Tube to degenerate into today's sorry state. With utmost cynicism, Treasury and Transport ministers now hope to offload the whole wretched mess onto three PPP companies (who take over the hardware) and the mayor (who inherits the staff, fares and decisions about train frequencies).

One of the earliest problems confronting Bob Kiley when he inherits the Underground's staff will be the regular delinquency of the Tube unions - particularly those representing drivers. In recent months, the RMT and Aslef have been lucky enough to be associated with a highly popular issue (that is, opposition to the PPP). But this short-term PR coup cannot obscure the longer-term problem of strikes, militancy and restrictive practices that have undermined the Underground management's capacity to deliver services.

Because of the extraordinary secrecy and denial that have been the hallmarks of the Tube's management for many years, it is virtually impossible for anyone outside the closed world of the Underground to be sure precisely where the problems lie.

SOME figures speak for themselves.

Recent Parliamentary questions have shown that station staff numbers rose by 28 per cent between 1995-96 and 2000-2001. In the same period, the number of train drivers jumped by 32 per cent. Passenger numbers rose in this period, though by less. Crucially, the number of train kilometres operated only rose by some 15 per cent.

Yet, station closures because of staff shortages more than doubled in 2000-2001, while the reliability of the peak-hour train service in the past year has been devastated by absenteeism.

Underground managers have now taken to offering a bonus of 250 for staff who turn up regularly for work.

Closed booking offices and long ticket queues are the norm. It is clear that additional staff have not meant a better service.

Kiley has kept his powder dry as to how he will approach the vexed question of the unions. Presumably one of his first acts will be to replace much of the senior management. These managers have provided the public with a grim service in recent years and there is no reason to imagine that they have not similarly treated the staff. As with Britain's lamentable industrial relations in the 1970s, union intransigence and conservatism must largely be blamed on management weakness.

During his time running the New York subway, Mr Kiley tamed the fearsome subway unions without strike action. Today the US city's subway workers take reasonable pride in their modernised, air- conditioned system. It would certainly be best for London if this same trick can be worked here: during the past decade, there were strikes on the Underground in 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2001.

In 1996, seven days were lost (more, if the impact on surrounding days is taken into account). Perhaps Mayor Livingstone will be able to use his good contacts with the unions to encourage them not to take their anger out on the public in future.

But let us return briefly to the ministers and civil servants who are now so desperate to dump the Underground on the mayor and his transport commissioner. If ever there were evidence of the cack- handed incompetence of national government and senior officials in the running of a public service, the London Underground is surely it.

For years the Treasury starved the Tube of cash because it was felt LT managers were hopeless.

Rather than replace the managers - in the way Mr Livingstone combed the world and found Mr Kiley - the system degenerated to its present patch- and- mend state.

NOW, in an effort to rid the Government of the Tube for ever, it has been decided to seek to impose a form of semi-privatisation never before attempted. It is this proposal for a PPP - and the mayor's opposition to it - that exercised the High Court last week. But whatever the result of the court case, the need to sort out the Underground's management and union problems will continue.

The Underground will remain in the spotlight during the weeks and months ahead. At some point during the next year, Mr Kiley will have to start to deal with the Tube's industrial relations problems while putting right years of Whitehall failure.

However effective the transport commissioner is, there can be no hope of improvement for at least five years.

Successive British governments are guilty of decades of neglect and complacency towards the Tube.

Copyright 2001
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