London set for three days of Tube misery as workers start strike

Londoners were once again battling to work this morning through travel chaos caused by a 72-hour strike by workers from the Tube line maintenance firm Metronet.

All but three of the capital’s Tube lines ground to a halt yesterday afternoon, and Transport for London (TfL) cautioned last night that normal service would not resume until Friday morning.

The Jubilee, Northern and Picadilly lines, which are managed by a separate maintenance company, continue to operate, but TfL said that these would be extremely crowded.

A spokesman for the RMT Union, which organised the strike in a dispute over job security and pensions after Metronet went into administration, predicted that the remaining lines would prove harder to run as the strike progressed.

“These lines share some tracks and signal services with Metronet lines,” he said. “If anything goes wrong there won’t be any way to repair them.”

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, had made a last-minute attempt to halt the strike. He called it one of the most “purposeless” actions mounted to date and said that all issues raised by the unions over jobs, transfers and pensions had been settled.

These assurances had appeared to pacify the two other unions involved in the dispute, Unite and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), both of which called off their strikes hours before the planned 6pm walkout.

However, the TSSA will hold further talks on pensions this week and has given warning that its members could join a second 72-hour strike planned by the RMT for next week if its demands are not satisfied.

Analysts estimated that the strike would cost London’s economy up to £50 million a day, while business groups gave warning of a severe impact on tourism and industry.

The 3.2 million passengers who travel by Tube each day have been advised to make alternative arrangements or refrain from travelling altogether. Last night long queues formed at bus stops. A spokesman for Transport for London told The Times: “As many buses will be on the network as possible.” However, TfL is unable to increase significantly the number of buses running through the capital.

“We are asking operators to put out as many extra services as possible but it will have a limited impact,” he said. “We haven’t got a huge supply of buses that are not normally in use and we are to a certain extent limited by staffing issues. We have a finite number of licensed drivers, and there are resilience issues. This is a 72-hour strike.”

Commuters who were considering climbing into their cars were warned that the congestion charge would continue to operate as normal.

Last night Eva Coleman, 47, a legal secretary from Walthamstow who had been stranded at King’s Cross by the strike, said: “The Tube [union] bosses think they can just call a strike whenever they feel like it, without taking into account the pain and suffering they cause. I have had to take half a day off just so I can make it home. Tomorrow is going to be even worse.”

Explaining the action, Bob Crow, the general secretary of the RMT, said: “We have been seeking simple, unqualified guarantees from Metronet and its administrator that there will be no job losses, forced transfers or pension cuts and we have not had them.

“The problem for all of us remains that Metronet and its administrator are the employer and the qualified assurances they have given cover only the period of administration.”

Yesterday 2,300 of their members began picketing Tube depots: today they will lobby the Department for Transport for Tube maintenance work to be brought back in-house.

Tim Toole, managing director of London Underground, said that the RMT had received a letter from Metronet and the administrator last Friday stating that there would be “no job losses, no transfers and no loss of pensions as a result of the collapse of Metronet”. He said the strike would cause “the lives of millions of Londoners to be disrupted . . . RMT members will lose hundreds of pounds”.

Service disruption

— The Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines are scheduled to run as normal, except on the Piccadilly Line between Hyde Park Corner and Northfields/Uxbridge, where service is suspended. TfL advises that all three lines will be very crowded

— Passengers are advised to use alternative routes where possible, including the DLR, National Rail and bus services. Tube tickets may be used on bus services

— Anyone who can cycle or walk is advised to do so: a spokesman said that 10,000 parking spaces for bikes had been introduced in recent years, along with a larger network of cycle lanes

— Commuter riverboat services operate between Putney and Blackfriars, from Hilton Docklands in Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf, and from Greenwich to Blackfriars and The Savoy hotel

— Anyone who can defer their journey until Friday morning is urged to do so
Source : http://business.timesonline.co.uk