Transport strike stirs chaos in London

Commuters trying to get around London faced chaos on Tuesday as the entire underground network was shut down by the first two days of strikes planned for this week.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, or RMT, voted overwhelmingly to strike in protest at what they see to be a threat to their jobs and pensions, following an independent review organized by London Mayor Sadiq Khan on how the system can recover from the pandemic's impact.

Transport for London, or TfL, identified the pension scheme and a reduction in station jobs as ways to save money, but RMT general secretary Mick Lynch accused the government of "deliberately engineering" a financial crisis within the service "which would savage jobs, services, safety and threaten working conditions and pensions".

"These are the very same transport staff praised as heroes for carrying London through COVID for nearly two years, often at serious personal risk, who now have no option but to strike to defend their livelihoods… politicians need to wake up to the fact that transport staff will not pay the price for this cynically engineered crisis."

He also said Khan could "solve this dispute by agreeing to talks that meet the concerns of his own workforce".

"For the good of his workers and London's recovery, Sadiq needs to stand firm against the government, stop the pensions raid and end the job massacre," Lynch said.

With disruption expected all day, people were advised to work from home wherever possible.

A second day of strike is planned for Thursday, with the days in between also likely to be affected because of the knock-on effect of the previous day's actions.

Huge queues

The strike also meant that other public transport services were busier than usual, with the BBC sharing images of huge queues and even reporting scuffles among passengers trying to get onto buses.

Arbitration talks to try to avoid the strike broke down because TfL "confirmed all the union's worst fears that nothing is off the table in terms of the threat to jobs, pensions, conditions and safety", said the RMT.

TfL chief operating officer Andy Lord called the strike "extremely disappointing" and said the suggested savings would not mean any compulsory redundancies, as vacancies would be left unfilled.

"No proposals have been tabled on pensions or terms and conditions, and nobody has or will lose their jobs as a result of the proposals we have set out," he said.

"The devastating impact of the pandemic on TfL finances has made a program of change urgently necessary and we need the RMT to work with us, rather than disrupting London's recovery."