The Tube drivers’ union Aslef on Monday confirmed that Wednesday’s strike on the London Underground will go ahead.
The 24-hour action, which will also see thousands of RMT station staff walk out, will shut the Tube on Budget Day – with the knock-on impact also causing problems on Thursday morning.
Transport for London has warned passengers that “little or no Tube services are expected to run” on Wednesday – though the Elizabeth line and London Overground will operate as normal.
Rail passengers face further problems on Thursday, with the RMT due to restart its action against 14 train companies, including Thameslink, Southern, Southeastern and Avanti West Coast, in a separate battle over pay.
Parts of the Elizabeth line and London Overground, and sections of the District and Bakerloo lines, are likely to be disrupted.
Aslef said Wednesday’s strike was its first network-wide walkout since 2015. About 2,000 of its members will take part. Tube staff are not striking over pay but the threat to pensions and working conditions.
Finn Brennan, Aslef’s organiser on the Underground, said: “The strike will go ahead as there are no talks scheduled before the action starts.
“This is not a strike about pay or for more time off. It is about making sure that change and ‘modernisation’ comes about by agreement.
“Central government has used the effects of the pandemic to insist that TfL targets staff pensions and working conditions.
“They have no problem bailing out the banks or handing our billions of pounds in dubious contracts to their chums but they refuse to properly fund vital services like public transport in this country.
“The government wants London Underground staff to fill the hole in it has made in TfL’s budget by accepting huge cuts to their pension benefits and changes to working conditions that would destroy our work/life balance and slash their income in retirement. Aslef members just aren’t prepared to accept that.”
A delayed announcement on the plans for the TfL pension scheme is due to on Friday. TfL says there are no proposals on the table and insists there is no need for a strike. But the threat to pensions has already resulted in six RMT Tube strikes last year.
TfL published a 69-page “pensions option paper” last October, as required under the terms of its Government covid bailouts. TfL spends about £330m a year on pensions – down from £400m when the Government first demanded savings.
The pensions paper said the requirement for TfL to cut a further £100m from the cost of running the pension scheme was “neither reasonable nor fair” and would result in it becoming “significantly less generous” than other public sector schemes.
Further RMT strikes on the national railways are also scheduled for Saturday (March 18) and on March 30 and April 1.
However, the union has suspended action by its members working at Network Rail – meaning the train strikes should be less damaging than previous walkouts.
