Tube users have been urged to check before travelling this week as strikes by staff escalate, bringing services to an early finish on Sunday evening and closing the London Underground entirely for four days from Monday.
The RMT union has batted back pleas to call off the industrial action, involving about 10,000 workers, as it attempts to secure a shorter working week as part of pay negotiations.
The series of strikes will mean almost no tube trains running until Friday, with other transport in the capital likely to be affected by crowding and congestion.
London’s other rail services – the Elizabeth line, London Overground and National Rail services – will continue to run, as will buses. Some central rail stations with tube interchanges will be closed.
Transport for London (TfL) expects the impact to be most keenly felt from Tuesday, with midweek days now the busiest for commuters since working from home became widespread.
Docklands Light Railway trains will also not run on Tuesday or Thursday because of strikes arising in a separate dispute.
TfL has promised to operate as many services as possible, after making a last-ditch appeal to the RMT union on Friday to call off the London Underground strike. It said it had now made a pay offer of 3.4%, which it urged the union to put to its members.
TfL described the offer as fair and in line with RPI inflation and other pay deals agreed in the rail industry, but said it could not meet demands from the RMT to look at reducing the hours in the working week, currently at 35 hours.
Members of the train drivers union, Aslef, are not involved in the strikes. It has yet to formally accept the deal but is not expecting to ballot for any action.
One estimate puts the potential economic impact of the strikes on the UK economy at more than £230m. The Centre for Economics and Business Research thinktank said its figure was fairly conservative as it is only accounted for direct losses from striking staff and commuters unable to reach work and not ripple effects such as lost productivity and lower spending by shoppers.
The series of RMT strikes, which began on Friday night with depot managers in west London, will start to affect services late on Sunday, as power and track access controllers take action.
Staff working on trains and stations will strike on Monday and Wednesday, and signallers and service controllers on Tuesday and Thursday, bringing the underground to a halt until 8am on Friday 12 September.
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Claire Mann, TfL’s chief operating officer, said customers should check before they travel, with little to no service expected on the tube. She said that TfL would “welcome further engagement from all of our unions about managing fatigue across the network, but a reduction in the contractual 35-hour working week is neither practical nor affordable”.
An RMT spokesperson said: “We believe a shorter working week is fair and affordable particularly when you consider TfL had a surplus of £166m last year and a £10bn annual operating budget. There are 2,000 fewer staff working on London Underground since 2018 and our members are feeling the strain of extreme shift patterns, giving rise to potential health problems due to fatigue.”
The last planned tube strike, in early 2024, was called off after the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, ambushed negotiations with news of an extra £30m for pay rises.
Bus drivers working for First Bus in west London are also due to strike for three days from Friday, bringing disruption on some routes.