Soup kitchen set up in protest at tube workers' sacking (From Harrow Times)

Soup kitchen set up by RMT union at St James's Park station in protest at sacking of London Underground staff

2:46pm Monday 14th January 2013 in News By Emma Innes

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union is setting up a soup kitchen in central London tomorrow morning to highlight the plight of 33 sacked London Underground workers.

The soup kitchen will be at St James's Park station from 8am.

The RMT is angry about the sacking of 33 London Underground agency workers on December 19.

It claims the workers, who worked on the Bakerloo line between Queens Park and Harrow and Wealdstone, had been employed on London Underground contracts for five years.

The union says that the staff were not given the opportunity to apply for jobs available at London Underground despite regulations forbidding this.

An RMT spokesman said: “Given the high unemployment in the area and the lack of opportunities for working people to get jobs, it is scandalous that London Underground has seen fit to throw all these hard working, decent people onto the dole.

“It is particularly scandalous when they have vacancies for the very same jobs these people have been doing for the past five years."

Two protests about the sackings were also held last week – one in central London and one at Wembley Central station.