This week’s strike represents a deterioration in industrial relations on the London Underground. It ought to be a chastening moment for the Conservatives in London who have long promised a magic wand for employee relations on the tube.

When a strike became a brief possibility just over one year ago, in the course of the mayoral election, the Conservative party’s main demand was a ‘no-strike’ agreement on the tube. It has been raised by Conservative politicians in London repeatedly over many years. Despite the fact that the no-strike deal was a complete fantasy, Boris Johnson promoted it as an industrial relations panacea when he was seeking Londoners’ votes.

So where is the no-strike deal? Over a year later, it has emerged that Johnson has not lifted a finger to implement his policy. On Ken Livingstone’s LBC radio phone-in two weeks ago, the former mayor asked RMT general secretary Bob Crow what steps Boris Johnson had taken towards ending strikes on the Tube.

Crow’s answer was that Johnson had done nothing at all. He had not even called a meeting with the RMT, the biggest Tube union, to discuss his election pledge. No one at any level of Johnson’s administration, from either TfL or from the mayor’s office, has broached the matter with the trade unions.

Of course the idea of a “no-strike” deal on the London Underground was only ever a flight of fancy. Trade unions in London have no intention of giving up their right to strike. Perhaps even more significantly Crow also revealed that Boris Johnson has not had a single meeting with the RMT leadership at all since he became mayor. For the mayor of the city never to have met the head of the union that represents the majority of London Underground employees is ludicrous and shows a poor set of priorities.

This vacuum of political leadership no doubt contributed to the misjudgements that have led to this week’s disruption. City Hall has relied on arguing that the dispute is either primarily about a demand for a five per cent pay rise, or that it is about disciplinary action faced by two tube workers. The argument on tube workers’ pay was hardly helped by Boris Johnson’s own five per cent pay rise, and his chief executive’s twelve per cent increase. But the real problem was first that the mayor tried to force through a five year pay deal at just about the worst imaginable moment. An attempt to make employees give a five year commitment about pay levels during a recession and the worst global economic situation 1929 was bound to blow up in the mayor’s face. In such a period of economic uncertainty few employees would commit to such a lengthy arrangement. This demand eventually had to be dropped this week, in favour of a shorter two year proposal.

The second factor is the question of guarantees over compulsory redundancies arising from the collapse of the Metronet consortium. Londoners were overwhelmingly opposed to the partial privatization of the underground through the PPP. Passengers and tube workers alike ought not to lose out because of its failure. Uncertainty over redundancies caused by Metronet’s failure was one of the key issues the then mayor Ken Livingstone had to address directly with the unions in 2007.

When the tube was first passed to devolved control after the PPP was imposed industrial relations on the underground were in a terrible state. The outgoing management backed the PPP deal and negotiated the contracts. It had presided over macho management techniques that failed to win over the workforce. Strike action was common. Disputes were characterised by opening gambits, fake first offers, industrial action and finally concessions, rather than honestly talking to the workforce about what was possible. Abandoning the former regime, world-class management was introduced to the system under Tim O’Toole. Though inevitably not a smooth process, the change at London Underground saw days lost due to action slashed.

London’s Conservative administration has now lost O’Toole and progress on the underground appears in reverse under a mayor who apparently does not have the time to meet the representatives of his own workforce and whose no-strike policy has now been exposed as a sham.

This article first appeared on Labourlist on 10.6.09. Read the original here.