City workers who are struggling to get to their offices due to Tube strikes have been told by the RMT to join a union if they are working long hours.
The RMT sent out the message as it is causing travel disruption in London this week with two walkouts.
The industrial action, in a dispute over moves to a four-day week for Tube drivers, has angered many Londoners, with hospitals warning that appointments for patients could be affected.
The RMT defended the strikes and posted on X: "If you're a city worker working an 18 hour day, you're being exploited and should #joinaunion.”
However, business chiefs condemned the industrial action amid signs that it is being less well supported than previous walkouts.
“For many businesses that rely on people visiting in person, the impact of these strikes will have already been felt through cancelled bookings and people changing their plans,” said Ed Richardson, programme director for transport at BusinessLDN.
“We urge both sides to reach a sustainable agreement to put an end to the damaging uncertainty hanging over businesses and London’s economy.”
But the RMT was pressing ahead with the second planned walkout, on Thursday, despite Transport for London stressing that the proposed four-day week for Tube drivers, who earn around £74,000 a year, would be voluntary.
The RMT’s position has also been severely challenged by the Aslef train drivers’ union accepting the move to a four-day week and hailing it as offering the best working conditions on the mainline rail network.
Benefits for drivers from the changes which have been highlighted by Aslef include an extra 35 days away from work a year, and average weekly rostered hours being cut to 34 from current average of 36.
The reforms would make it easier to arrange roster patterns, it added, to block leave together, or take long weekends or mini-breaks, and would save money on travel and childcare costs.
For the first time, drivers would be allowed to volunteer for overtime which would be paid at time and a quarter under the reforms which Aslef has hailed as delivering the “biggest improvement in working conditions for Underground train drivers in decades”.
The RMT, though, has dismissed the proposals as a “fake” four-day week, arguing it is compressing five days into four, raising concerns about drivers suffering from fatigue, getting late notice of shift, and objecting to the roll-out of Ipads.
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has urged the RMT to get back to the negotiating table to try to avoid more walkouts.
Jared Wood, the RMT’s London transport regional organiser, insisted that the union did not want to be striking.
“We've got people stood out in the rain on picket lines losing their money because they're taking this action,” he told BBC radio.
“It's not something that people undertake lightly, but we have no other way of trying to defend our position, and we think that the rosters that they want to bring in are going to inflict very difficult working conditions on people.
“We don't think that they're going to be workable. We think that they're going to increase fatigue, and we have to do something about that.”
