Enlarge imageBy Katie Allen
LONDON (Reuters) - Workers on the London underground have threatened transport chaos by voting to strike on New Year’s Eve, a day when the city’s creaking transport system is always packed with revellers.
The RMT trade union said London Underground signals and line control staff voted overwhelmingly to strike on December 31 and January 4 to protest at their pay, conditions and proposed job cuts on the world’s oldest city subway network.
"The strike would affect the entire network. You can’t run a network without signallers," said a spokesman for the union, adding 330 workers would walk out.
"The depth of the disruption would be determined partly by how much of a token service management were able to run by getting managers to do our members’ work. I would suspect that the network would be as good as closed down."
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But a spokeswoman for London Underground said talk of a shutdown was exaggerated.
"We will be able to run a service over New Year’s Eve. We are planning our operations now in order to do so," she said. London Underground did not say how extensive services would be.
Last-ditch talks to avert a strike, the latest stage in a four-year dispute over working hours and conditions, ended on Thursday night without agreement but were scheduled to resume on Friday morning.
"I understand the company did make some significant moves. So the message is ’watch this space’," an RMT spokesman told Reuters.
London Underground Chief Operating Officer Mike Brown said: "We have been talking to all the trade unions and we are willing to talk as long as it takes to resolve this issue."
The union is pushing for a 35-hour week rather than the current 37-hour week and it opposes plans to cut rest time between shifts.
Workers must give seven days’ notice of strike action.
The Tube has been plagued by industrial disputes, system failures, overcrowding and delays.
A strike over New Year will doubtless fan the ire of Londoners by forcing revellers to use buses or drive to celebrations in the capital, worsening the already familiar festive road congestion.
Separately, London Underground said it would run a special service on the Piccadilly line on Christmas Eve as workers from another union strike in support of a driver who was downgraded for passing four red signals.
London Underground said there would likely be no service on parts of the line but replacement bus services were planned and it advised people to allow more time for their journeys.
If passengers were using the Piccadilly Line to reach Heathrow Airport on Christmas Eve they should allow extra time for their journey, London Underground said.
