Planned strikes on the London Underground next week have been cancelled.
The RMT and Aslef unions have suspended industrial action after RMT’s general secretary Mick Lynch said there had been “significant progress” in talks held by the conciliation service, Acas.
Although some progress has been made, there is still a mandate for further strikes and negotiations are continuing.
The RMT and Aslef unions have been meeting London Underground negotiators on Thursday to discuss the issues that prompted what were likely to be network-wide shutdowns.
Here’s all we know about the previously planned strikes.
When were the London Tube strikes set to take place in July?
The RMT was planning five days of strikes on the London Underground on Sunday, July 23, Tuesday, July 25, Wednesday, July 26, Thursday, July 27 and Friday, July 28.
Aslef members were also meant to strike on Wednesday, July 26 and Friday, July 28.
Why were London Tube workers striking?
There is an array of issues between the unions and TfL. Workers say they are concerned about job cuts, their working conditions, pensions and pay.
Mr Lynch said: “We are aware that Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has had the TfL budget cut. However, he needs to align himself with our union and his London Underground staff in pushing back against the Tory government, exposing their damaging agenda to a key part of London transport infrastructure.”
Finn Brennan, Aslef’s full-time organiser on London Underground, said he and his members were opposed to new London Underground procedures set to be implemented from January 2024. Mr Brennan said these would mean “no right to representation or appeal at stage one of the disciplinary process and the length of all warnings would be doubled from 26 to 52 weeks”.
Mr Brennan said that under the proposed plans, all sickness leave that lasted longer than a week would be seen as “long-term” leave. “After just six weeks in deployment, a driver can be, as they put it, terminated,” he added.
Mr Brennan said: “Management also want to force through their plans for what they call “trains modernisation”. They want unrestricted remote booking on and off, driving shifts up to 10 hours long, “flexible cover” weeks in every roster, and fixed links to be scrapped. That would make it impossible for Tube train drivers to organise their lives outside work or to have an effective change over system.
“Their aim is an entirely flexible workforce with all existing agreements replaced – allowing them to cut hundreds more jobs and forcing those of us who remain to work harder for longer.
