Friday, November 26, 2010

Fourth Tube Strike on for 28th - 29th November

In spite of talks and the RMT & TSSA unions offering to suspend the industrial action, if London Underground agreed to a 12 week suspension of cuts, the next Tube strike remains on. Some services will stop from as early as 6.30pm on Sunday night, 28th November and then disruption is likely all day on Monday 29th November.

TfL home page taken over by strike

TfL's home page this morning has details, as before, of the services they expect to run.



TfL take to YouTube with a message about the Tube strikes

Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy said: 'London Underground has been ready and willing to discuss any safety concerns which the RMT and TSSA leaderships may have had since these proposals were announced at the start of March.

'We remain willing to discuss these at any time.

'The fact is that the TSSA and RMT leaderships are not facing reality, and are determined to inconvenience Londoners by striking over post reductions, many of which have already happened
.'

There's no mention as to why they didn't accept the offer to suspend cuts for 12 weeks in return for "a thorough station-by-station safety evaluation to take place" in that period.

No doubt we'll hear more from Bob Crow on this in the coming days. But for now prepare for a more manic Monday than normal. Keep an eye on the sadly all to familiar strike page on TfL's site for your travel on Sunday evening & Monday.

Update - So yesterday London Underground offered to continue the review for a further six weeks (having been consulting for six months already) and the union leaders, said no and wanted 12. Howard Collins, Chief operating officer of LU said 'Despite this offer, the leaders of the TSSA and RMT have demonstrated once again that their only interest is in disrupting Londoners - despite the fact that over half of the post reductions have already been achieved through voluntary redundancy and natural wastage.

'If they are serious about resolving this issue, they should call off their totally unnecessary strike immediately.  We will talk to them right now on any genuine safety issues they have.

'We want an end to this dispute and believe that a resolution will be only achieved through talks, not by further threats to disrupt London
.'

PS - Adam Bienkov looks at Boris's No Strike Deal election pledge, which now makes excellent reading. London Assembly member Val Shawcross shares the same view "I have leaflets Boris Johnson handed out when he was trying to get elected two years ago saying he had a plan to end strikes once and for all but it seems things are just getting worse. He needs to end his stubborn, childish attitude of not talking to the unions, get around the table and sort this out".

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