Tube strike chaos as thousands of London Underground workers to stage two 24-HOUR strikes next month
TUBE workers will stage TWO 24-hour strikes next month – sparking chaos for London commuters.
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) announced the strikes, which will be held in a dispute over jobs, pay and conditions.
Workers have been told not to come into work on Tuesday, March 1 and Thursday, March 3.
According to the Evening Standard, the decision to strike is over plans to axe up to 600 jobs posts in a bid to save cash.
Transport for London (TfL) is thought to be in a blackhole of £15 billion pounds, with London Mayor Sadiq Khan said to be considering shutting London’s tube network for days at a time.
TfL’s finances were dealt a severe blow by the drastic fall in revenue raised by fares during the pandemic.
Critics of the Mayor of London have also claimed that his pledge in 2016 not to raise fares has contributed to the situation in TfL’s finances.
Mr Khan, 51, who is also the chairman of TfL, had to rely on a number of bailouts from Westminster to prevent London Underground and the capital’s buses from grinding to a halt.
The RMT accused the Government of “engineering a financial crisis at London Underground”.
The 48-hours of strikes is expected to force the closure of the London Underground network.
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There is also a possibility tube workers under other unions could join the strike.
Workers walked out last month, with strikes on the Central and Victoria lines.
It came after Transport for London scrapped the 200 part-time Night Tube drivers during the pandemic, with regular drivers now asked to work occasional night shifts instead.
In late 2021, Union RMT announced they plan to strike every weekend on the Night Tube from January 7, 2022, through to June in “an on-going fight to prevent the ripping up of staffing arrangements that would wreck the work life balance of drivers,” according to a statement sent to City A.M.
Strike action has been carried out since the Night Tube was restarted during the last weekend in November 2021 after being suspended in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.