Travel Chaos – Strikes Again!

London was plunged into travel chaos again this week: another tube strike left commuters stranded as parts of the city ground to a standstill. For those of you who somehow missed the first one, this is the second strike instituted by the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) as they protest the planned closure of all of London Underground’s ticket offices. This latest 48-hour walkout comes after a planned strike in March was halted by the RMT at the eleventh hour – but unfortunately for Londoners, no such reprieve came this time around.

The dispute began several months ago when TfL, chaired by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, announced its modernisation program for the tube. This plan envisaged increasing some tube services to run 24 hours a day over the coming years, and shutting the ticket offices at stations (which are allegedly a drain on resources that is used on fewer than 3% of journeys). Under this agreement, there would have been no compulsory job losses – but the RMT leadership refused to accept this and balloted their members on calling a strike. Despite only around 30% of the RMT’s London Underground Chapter members voting in favour of industrial action, strikes were announced by the former leader of the RMT Bob Crow earlier this year.

Following the successful mediation, there was hope amongst Londoners that they would be spared further disruption, however the process took an unexpected turn following the shock death of Bob Crow from a heart attack in March of this year. The timeline of events has led to some suggesting that this latest strike is a manifestation of the RMT’s infighting, as different hard-left members of the union attempt to gain their members’ loyalty before the upcoming leadership election – though the front-runners in the election unsurprisingly deny this.

In addition to the expected opposition from Johnson who called the strike ‘pointless’ and ‘farcical’, both David Cameron and Ed Miliband have stepped in, with the Labour Party leader saying that it was ‘wrong for the strike to go ahead whilst negotiations were still taking place’. London Underground’s Managing Director Mike Brown offered the chance for a review of the decisions made so far, but insisted that the ticket offices would remain closed. The RMT dismissed the offer as meaningless.

The Tube chaos has seen the city’s streets grind to a standstill. TfL is running nearly 300 extra buses including several heritage routemasters, but even this couldn’t alleviate the gridlock that faced many commuters on their journeys today, whilst in the west of the city the travel chaos was heightened by a separate strike on the Heathrow Express by RMT workers. In addition to the 40 mediation meetings held to date, more will no doubt happen over the coming days.

Whether they will come to any fruition with both sides refusing to back down is another question, but we can only hope…