Keeping London moving: London’s transport workforce

The workforce of Transport for London (formerly London Transport) is an essential part of London life. Without it the capital would come to a standstill. This is as true today as was the case over a century ago. The transport workforce is recruited from a wide cross-section of the population to perform a great variety of roles.  

Public transport in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was labour-intensive. Horse-drawn transport required conductors and drivers to operate the buses, ostlers, blacksmiths and vets to look after the horses, and coachbuilders to maintain the vehicles.  Stable hands were needed for the horses, and track maintenance workers were needed to run the horse-drawn trams.  

Horse bus crews soon became a familiar sight on London’s streets. Drivers wore a greatcoat and top hat, and conductors a suit and bowler hat. By the turn of the twentieth century, each company had its own uniform of sorts, with badges, buttons and company insignia. 

In the 1900s, the new motor buses and electric trams needed skilled drivers, but also engineers and garage mechanics. This was new and pioneering work, with training and safety vitally important. This motor bus training was to have wider benefits for the country during the First World War, when many London bus drivers and mechanics volunteered to drive and maintain vehicles for the British Army.  

Today’s Underground system stands as a tribute to the great nineteenth and early twentieth century engineers, as well as to the thousands of unknown navvies and miners who built it. The construction of the Underground was a huge task in terms of skill, labour and cost.  

From the 1860s to the 1880s, labourers dug the first sub-surface railway tunnels, for the Metropolitan and District Railways. The deeper tube lines required miners to dig the tunnels through London’s soft clay with the protection of the Greathead Shield, a huge supportive structure that held tunnels in place before they were lined. 

In the early years of the Underground, before the advent of electric railways, drivers and firemen were employed to operate steam locomotives. The electric Underground, or ‘Tube’, needed skilled drivers and electricians, just as in modern times. Trains required many more crew before the days of pneumatic door operation. Each carriage had a gateman to let passengers on and off at stations. 

Before mechanisation, staff were needed to sell, collect and inspect tickets. The number of staff employed in these activities has been reduced over the years, with the introduction of automatic machines to issue Underground tickets and collect them at the barriers, and more recently the Oyster card and contactless payment. 

In addition to ‘front-line’ work, there has always been a wide range of jobs and services facilitating day-to-day operations. These jobs are carried out by track, or ‘Permanent Way’ workers; engineers; lift and escalator mechanics; ‘fluffers’ who clean the tracks by night; rat-catchers; gardeners and tree loppers; caterers and cleaners; uniform fitters; sports ground workers; travel information and lost property staff – to name but a few.  

Other, less visible, ‘white collar’ jobs include personnel and recruitment, as well as transport planners; solicitors; architects; press and public relations; designers; advertising and publicity, and Museum staff. 

Since its creation in 1933, London Transport (now Transport for London, or TfL) has been a major employer in the capital. During the 1940s, the company employed 100,000 staff. Today, with increasing mechanisation, rationalisation and the division of units and tasks, TfL has a workforce of a little over a quarter of that figure. Many tasks are now outsourced to contracted companies, rather than TfL staff. 

Historically, transport related roles were dominated by men. At the outbreak of the First World War, women were recruited for what were regarded at the time as ‘male’ jobs. In March 1915, the Underground agreed upon a temporary policy of recruiting ‘women substitutes’. When Maida Vale station opened on the Bakerloo line in June of that year, it was staffed entirely by women.  

In November 1915, Thomas Tilling Ltd became the first bus company to employ women conductors, though it took a major strike to win equal pay for women. Whilst women undertook all sorts of war work, they had to give up their jobs when men came home from the war.  

Twenty years later, upon the outbreak of the Second World War, women were again in demand as a substitute labour force, taking on virtually every job previously carried out by men, including manual labour and heavy engineering work.  

London Transport (LT) recruited women on a much larger scale than it had during the First World War. They performed nearly all duties except driving, which was a ‘reserved occupation’, with male drivers not called up for military service and continuing in their jobs. After the war, some women were kept on as part of the workforce, but not without a struggle for acceptance and equal pay.  

In 1974, Jill Viner became the first woman bus driver, and in 1978 Hannah Dadds became the first woman Underground train driver. Today, there are many more women working across all areas and types of roles within TfL. However, as in industry generally, women are still not proportionally represented within public transport. 

During the 1920s and 1930s, work in transport was much sought after and relatively well paid. After the Second World War, as with many other employment sectors, LT began to experience a labour shortage. Jobs in transport held less appeal than before the war, when work had been scarce. Wages were now comparatively lower than those offered in the past. In the late 1940s, LT began recruitment drives in areas of unemployment outside London, extending the search to Ireland. A small number of bus drivers were also recruited from Malta in 1965. 

From the mid-1950s, LT began a policy of direct recruitment in the Caribbean, in conjunction with West Indian governments concerned about rising unemployment in the islands. During the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of new recruits from Barbados, and later Jamaica and Trinidad, were invited to work for LT.  

From the 1970s onwards, LT began to reflect the ethnic mix of London’s population, as many newly arrived Asian workers joined LT’s diverse workforce. 

From the early days of mass public transport, workers were represented by a number of different trade union organisations, negotiating pay and improvements in conditions like sick pay and holidays. Railway workers were represented by the National Union of Railway Workers (now part of the National Union of Railway, Maritime and Transport Workers, or RMT), the Amalgamated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) and the Railway Clerks Association (now the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, or TSSA). 

Road transport unions included the Amalgamated Association of Tramway and Vehicle Workers, and the London Bus, Tram and Motor Workers Union. Both were absorbed into the London and Provincial (‘red button’) union in 1913. In 1922, the powerful Transport and General Workers Union was formed, representing a considerable proportion of London’s bus and tram workers.  

In 1926, many transport workers were involved in the nine-day General Strike, along with dockers and steelworkers, supporting the coal miners in their fight for fairer employment terms and working conditions. The 1950s saw another period of industrial unrest, involving a series of disputes regarding pay and conditions for bus workers. Disputes in the 1970s and 1980s centred on the introduction of one-person-operated buses and trains, and more recently Underground ticket office closures. 

Traditionally, the relationship between employees and their bosses in transport was paternalistic. LT and its successor TfL have tried to address the overall well-being of employees through a range of services, from the Transport Benevolent Fund to clubs and social activities. There was also a wide range of internal publications for staff, continuing today with staff publications such as Upfront and On the Move.  

For many years, LT offered employees recreational activities including cricket and football clubs, dances and family outings, amateur dramatics, singing and skydiving. For some people, these social activities are central to working and community life, acting as a focus for both themselves and their families during their service with LT and now TfL. 

Today, TfL employs just over 27,000 people across a wide range of roles. Most recently, some TfL workers have been in the spotlight in their capacity as ‘key workers’ during the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020, keeping the transport system functioning despite this dangerous virus. TfL workers such as cleaners, drivers and station staff have been on the front line during the worst pandemic London has seen for a century. They have faced greater risks, and some have died. To date, over 30 bus workers in London have lost their lives to the virus.  

TfL’s workforce, and London as a whole, has again shown how quickly it can adapt to changes in personnel, wars, mechanisation, and now, a pandemic. Throughout these challenges TfL, and its predecessor companies, has succeeded in keeping London moving.