The RMT is asking London Underground to match a deal brokered with Network Rail to guarantee no strikes during the Olympics - of an extra £3.50 an hour for staff covering the Games, and a pay deal of a 10% rise over two years.
The extra cash would come to around £500 per employee which, if the Standard's estimate of 12,000 tube workers is accurate, would mean it'd cost about £6m* to keep London strike free. We don't think that's at all bad, and the 10% pay rise isn't actually that double-take inducing when you remember that inflation's running at about 5%. The Network Rail deal also agrees that no staff member can be sacked during the Games (just suspended on pay) and that all disputes will go to ACAS, with no industrial action while talks are ongoing.
So if this gets signed off, all that has to happen is to get the tube lines working smoothly. Peasy, right?
Photo by pallab seth from the Londonist Flickr pool
* This post was amended to reflect the fact that the author is a tool who cannot do maths
