London Mayor Boris Johnson clashes with UK RMT leader Bob Crow over Tube strike in radio phone-in "Ticket Offices Are Old Fashioned Technology" Says London Mayor

London Mayor Boris Johnson clashes with UK RMT leader Bob Crow over Tube strike in radio phone-in "Ticket Offices Are Old Fashioned Technology" Says London Mayor
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/london-tube-strike-boris-johnson-31...
• Feb 04, 2014 12:56
• By Richard Hartley-Parkinson

Boris Johnson received a phone call from Bob Crow during his weekly phone-in after the union leader went to City Hall to try and confront the Mayor of London

Boris and Bob crow
Boris Johnson and Bob Crow spoke for the first time in years today during a bizarre confrontation over a planned strike by Tube workers .

Leaders of the RMT and TSSA unions have accused London Mayor Mr Johnson of refusing to meet them to discuss the closure of ticket offices.

Mr Crow and Manuel Cortes, general secretaries of the two unions, went to City Hall to try to confront Mr Johnson.

The mayor was at the central London studios of LBC radio for his weekly phone-in, when Mr Crow spoke to him on his mobile from outside City Hall.

"We are not here to score points - all we want is an opportunity to negotiate about the Tube .

"We are asking you to listen to our point of view. We would love to call the strike off."

Mr Crow said: "We would love to call the strike off, this strike can be called off ... a form has been sent over saying that these jobs are going."

If that form was suspended, Mr Crow said, "we can suspend our industrial action" but, turning Mr Johnson's claim back on him, he accused the mayor of holding a gun to the heads of the unions.

"The problem that we have got, we have got the chief executive officer of London Underground coming to our negotiators saying he's got the authority from the very top not to do it," the RMT leader said.

Before the on-air phone call Mr Johnson admitted it had been a "few years" since he had spoken to Mr Crow.

The London mayor told him: "Yes, of course there are job losses involved in what we are proposing to do and we accept that. But there are no compulsory redundancies, Bob, and we have already had more than 1,000 people show an expression of interest in voluntary redundancy.

"A huge proportion of those have a firm intent to seek voluntary redundancy. We could go now with those numbers and through natural wastage we would have solved the problem.

"There is absolutely no need to go ahead with this action.

"So please, please, please get into negotiation with our team."

But Mr Crow said the RMT and TSSA unions can not negotiate "while you've put a gun to our heads ... you served the notice on our unions to say these jobs are going".

"If you had never served the notice, we would not have been voting for strike action, there wouldn't be a strike tonight," he said.

"The simple way round it is technically withdraw that notice, suspend the notice, we'll suspend the action and we can all get round the table, out of the pressure cooker, and we look at the future of London Underground."

Mr Johnson said Mr Crow was talking "complete nonsense" and accused him of "muscle flexing".

He said: "The RMT know they have absolutely no chance of stopping this, it's inevitable, but what they need to do is show to their members and indeed to their future possible members that London Underground can't make changes without this kind of industrial action."

This afternoon David Cameron's official spokesman said that the Prime Minister "thinks that Bob Crow's strike is plain wrong and Bob Crow should call it off rather than inflict misery on hard-working families in London."

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