TfL warns of severe disruption from London Underground strike
Union says management has refused to engage on pay and working conditions
London faces days of severe transport disruption from Sunday unless the RMT union cancels strikes over pay and working conditions, the organisation in charge of the UK capital’s public transport warned.
Transport for London said there would be limited services on the Underground on Sunday and “little to no service” on the network between Monday and Thursday because of the walkouts by the RMT union.
The strikes, which began on Sunday morning, are the first across the entire Underground network since March 2023. Services are expected to return to normal by late Friday morning.
A strike on the Docklands Light Railway is expected to close that system — which serves east London — on Tuesday and Thursday.
Strikes by drivers working for First Bus are likely to disrupt some routes in north-west, west and south-west London between Friday September 12 and Sunday September 14. First Bus is one of the contractors running London’s red bus services.
The Underground strikes, announced last month, will be the most disruptive action.
Ahead of the start of the strikes, Claire Mann, TfL chief operating officer, called on the union to suspend the planned action and return to talks. She said the RMT had not put management’s pay offer to its members.
“Our pay deal is in line with other offers accepted by the RMT across the rail industry, so it is disappointing the RMT is planning to disrupt Londoners without giving their members a say on the offer,” she said.
TfL said it had offered Underground staff a 3.4 per cent annual increase, in line with retail price inflation, in February.
The union said, when announcing the strikes, that management had refused to engage seriously with union demands on pay, fatigue management, extreme shift patterns and a reduction in the working week.
There were 1.22bn journeys on the Underground in the year to March.
The Elizabeth line, London Overground and Croydon Tramlink are expected to run normally.
However, TfL warned some services could be very crowded during the stoppage and there might be disruption in some places where those services shared stations with the Underground. Mainline rail services will be unaffected.