London Tube commuters braced for travel chaos
Trade the News
Tuesday September 07, 2010 03:01:23 AM GMT
LONDON, Sept 6 (Reuters) - As commuters prepared for travel chaos on Monday at the start of a series of strikes on the London Underground, management and unions traded blows over new safety claims.
About 200 Alstom-Metro maintenance workers on the Jubilee and Northern lines began industrial action over pay on Sunday evening, with other 24-hour strikes due to take place on Oct. 2, Nov. 1 and Nov. 27.
On Monday, up to 10,000 members of the Rail Maritime and Transport and white collar TSSA union, ranging from station employees to drivers, will put down their tools late afternoon at the start of four one-day strikes to protest 800 ticket-office job cuts.
Other dates will be October 3, November 2 and November 28.
In an apparent escalation of the dispute, the RMT accused London Underground on Monday of "playing fast and loose" with safety, saying a circular had gone around desperately appealing for volunteers to try and run services regardless of whether they have the necessary operational licences.
"There do not appear to be any corners that London Undergound are not prepared to cut in order to bulldoze through their lethal cocktail of job and safety cuts," RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said in a statement.
"Sending out a few volunteers without the necessary Operational Licences and training to try and run a few trains is a disaster waiting to happen."
But LU said it had sought volunteers to hand out information to passengers, not to carry out skilled jobs.
"No one will ever be asked to do a job that they have not got the appropriate licence for, and we would never allow any member of staff who did not have valid operational licences to work in safety-critical roles," a Transport for London spokesman said in a statement. (Writing by Avril Ormsby; Editing by Martin Golan)
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