Why are the staff cuts on the underground so necessary to TfL?
Is the answer "so top TfL bosses can keep paying themselves huge salaries"?
Salaries for 2013
Top 3 earners
Peter Hendy, £650,352. Mike Brown, £473,551. Howard Carter, £368,375.
In the last financial year, all 6 top TfL bosses, got paid more than president Obama of the USA, who is paid $400,000 (£245,438).
In the same year, a further 300 TfL staff were paid more than £100,000. The bonuses were agreed by a Remuneration Committee chaired by TfL board member, Paralympian Baroness Tani Grey Thompson. She said: "The excellent management team and staff of TfL have really delivered." But London Assembly (Green Party member) Jenny Jones said: "We can’t afford not to reduce the pay gap in this divided city".
TfL is bracing itself for painful cuts to its budget when the Chancellor announces his Spending Review. The organisstion claims it needs to spend £1.8bn a year on a programme of vital transport improvements.
Projects thought to be at risk include the upgrade of the Bakerloo and Piccadilly Lines and the Mayor's £900M "cycling vision".
General Secretary of the RMT Bob Crow said:
TfLs wages are 'outrageous'. With transport taking a massive hit in the spending review and news of 1000 underground jobs to be cut, it is outrageous that the top brass across TfL have raked in such huge bonuses.
Crossrail is paying out huge amounts in benevolent gifts for a project that hasn't even been completed yet, while trade unionists have been blacklisted off the site for fighting for health and safety and decent working conditions.
London Assembly Labour Group: TfL's bonuses 'shocking'
Responding to the publication of Transport for London’s Annual Accounts, London Assembly Labour Group Transport Spokesperson, Val Shawcross AM, said:
TfL’s bonus pot of £2.5million last year, came as a surprise to Londoners who have been forced to pay through the nose just to get to work. We’ve had five years of inflation busting fare rises under Boris Johnson only to be told that TfL paid out huge bonuses.
They may have been agreed by a committee but it is still shocking.
