The RMT union claimed to have shut down the London Underground with a one-day strike that it said was ‘to oppose pension attacks and job cuts’.
The strike on Monday closed some lines and severely disrupt services on others. In the afternoon, the BBC reported that the Circle, Victoria and Waterloo and City lines were closed, with the Bakerloo, Central, District, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee, Northern, and Piccadilly lines all running a limited service.
There was reported to be a normal service on the Elizabeth Line and Metropolitan Line and services on the Tram and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) were unaffected.
Transport for London (TfL), which said last week it expected severe disruption across the network, described many lines as running a ‘special’ service.
The RMT said 4,000 station and revenue control staff had shut down the capital’s Underground network in what it called ‘a show of strength’, with trains remaining in depots and its activists reporting huge attendances at picket lines.
It said 600 station staff jobs will be lost if TfL plans go through and its members face huge detrimental changes to their pensions and working conditions.
General secretary Mick Lynch urged London mayor Sadiq Khan to ‘stand up to the Tory government who are cutting funding to TfL rather than try to pick a fight with tube workers’.
He said: ‘I congratulate our station grade and revenue control staff members on London Underground for taking strike action in defence of their pensions and jobs. The effectiveness and industrial power of these members cannot be underestimated.
‘TfL London Underground Limited and the Mayor of London have had ample opportunity to negotiate with the union properly to avert this strike action today. Their intransigence and stubbornness have left RMT members no choice but to act decisively.’
Last week, TfL's chief operating officer, Andy Lord, described the strike as ‘particularly frustrating as no changes have been proposed to pensions and nobody has or will lose their job as a result of the proposals we have set out’.
On the same day TfL announced plans to cut bus services in the capital, which Seb Dance, deputy mayor for transport, described as ‘changes’.
He said: ‘No one wants to see reductions to our bus network, but TfL is having to consider these changes because of the savings demanded by the Government as part of the emergency funding deals during the pandemic.’
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