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LONDON’S Tube drivers announced plans yesterday to stage a 48-hour strike in fierce defence of their jobs and services.
RMT said the stoppage, which starts at 9pm on Tuesday next week and ends on Thursday night, will coincide with action by hundreds of thousands of other public-sector workers.
The union is campaigning against attacks on railway jobs and services led by London Mayor Boris Johnson under the banner Every Job Matters.
Cuts include the closure of ticket offices.
Eleven months of talks with Transport for London (TfL) have failed to resolve the dispute.
RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “RMT negotiators have made every effort in the long-running talks to resolve a range of issues that impact on our members jobs, their pay and working conditions and the safety of the services that they provide to the travelling public.
“The cuts, currently being bulldozed through, would de-staff whole areas of the Tube system at a time of surging passenger demand and would make evacuation and other basic safety procedures a physical impossibility.”
The announcement came as Tory Steve O’Connell, who is paid more than £100,000 by the taxpayer for two jobs — Croydon councillor and London Assembly member — has called for all Tube drivers to be sacked and the introduction of driverless trains on the Underground.
In a letter to the Croydon Advertiser Mr O’Connell said: “Driverless Tube trains may not be introduced for at least another 14 years according to an internal TfL document circulated around London’s transport bosses.
“Londoners are already safely and happily riding on driverless trains on the DLR. If they’re good enough for Paris, Copenhagen, Vancouver, Barcelona and Sao Paulo, there is no reason why they can’t be expanded in the capital.”
He claimed that driverless trains would help cut the annual Tube driver wage bill he puts at £141 million.
Mr Cash added: “RMT will not stand back and allow government-driven austerity cuts to hollow out the Tube system and leave it as a dangerous shell. We are also fully aware that the current cuts are just part of a multi-billion pound attack that will
include such lethal ideas as driverless-operation. The strike action next week is designed to force the mayor to instruct his senior officials to back away from this toxic cuts package and engage in serious and meaningful negotiations.”
