Rail and Tube strikes to cause misery for passengers

Rail and Tube passengers face travel chaos on Friday because of strikes in separate disputes which will badly affect City of London workers.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) on South Western Railway (SWR) will start a 48-hour walkout in the long-running row over the role of guards on trains.

Engineering work on parts of the network will lead to more disruption on the second day of the strike on Saturday.

Train drivers in the Aslef union working on London Underground’s Central Line will also strike on Friday in a dispute over industrial relations.

No trains will run on the line, normally used by 800,000 passengers a day, and there will be little or no service on the Waterloo and City Line, which employs Central Line drivers.

Tens of thousands of City workers travel to London Waterloo on SWR services then use the Waterloo and City Line to get to the Square Mile.

SWR said it planned to run nearly two thirds of regular services on Friday and half on Saturday.

Replacement buses will operate but some routes will not have a train service or a replacement bus service.

Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT, accused SWR of refusing to negotiate, saying the union has reached deals in Wales and Scotland and with a number of English franchises.

“There’s a simple solution to ‎this dispute and it means SWR stop playing with words and negotiate the guard guarantee that reflects the best safety practice elsewhere in the industry.”

An SWR spokesman said: “We are sorry that the RMT has yet again decided to disrupt customers’ journeys.

“Our train planners, together with our contingency guards from across the company, as well as those guards who usually work on strike days, will ensure we provide as many services as possible for our customers.

“We continue to call on the RMT to talk to us rather than strike, so that we can provide the best service possible for our customers.”

Finn Brennan of Aslef said of the Tube dispute: “Management on the Central Line treat their staff as dispensable units to be thrown away at will. Instead of supporting those unlucky enough to be unwell, the attendance management policy is being used to bully and intimidate them.

“Drivers are continually forced into overtime and unsafe new working practices are pushed through without agreement. It would be a dereliction of our duty as trade unionists if we did not take action to stop our members being treated like this.

“Senior figures at Transport for London need to take a long hard look at what is going wrong with industrial relations on London Underground and start to act to fix problems if more strikes are to be avoided.”