London commuters face severe disruption as Tube workers strike

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) Union walked out for 48 hours at 8:00 pm last night over plans to close all ticket offices. Transport for London said it hoped to run between 40-50 per cent of services. There were almost 8,000 buses on the roads - the most ever operated in London - after an extra 266 were put into service. The union and London Underground (LU) have met more than 40 times through the arbitration service Acas since the last 48-hour strike in February, but last-minute talks broke down yesterday. 

‘They’re looking to make 15 million pounds worth of cuts and to do that they want to get rid of every single booking office and a 1,000 jobs,’ Mike Cash, acting general secretary of the RMT union, told BBC Radio 4. ‘Now we took industrial action in February this year and we suspended it following a deal done with our former general secretary, Bob Crow, where they had promised to review every single station,’ Cash said.

Meanwhile, unless a deal is struck, a second 72-hour strike is planned for the same time next week which is expected to cause further chaos on London’s transport network.