Unless there’s an act of God or an effective intervention by the Mayor, London will stop working next week. In a succession of synchronised strikes by different groups of Tube workers, the Underground will effectively come to a standstill between Monday and Thursday, which actually means Sunday to Friday, given the knockon effects on trains. And if the Tube stops working, London stops working. Simple as that. For office workers like civil servants, this may be no big deal, given that so many of them prefer to run the country from their homes, but for construction workers, hairdressers, shop staff, bank clerks, chefs, teachers and nurses, if they don’t get to work, the work doesn’t get done.
God knows how the West End will manage, let alone the restaurant sector. It’ll be like Paris in August, when the city shuts down for the duration, except people won’t be off to the seaside; they’ll be kicking their heels at home. The cost to the economy in lost earnings and lost business is incalculable. And all because the RMT is exercised about staff hours – which at present amount to the outrageous total of 35 hours a week. May I say that there are any number of people working longer hours than that who won’t be able to function because they can’t get to work because they need the Tube to get to work. For the self-employed, it means a week’s lost earnings. And there are only so many of us who can use a hire bike; indeed, there are only so many bikes out there. The buses – if they run – are never accessible on strike days because they’re full to bursting at the start of the routes. The Elizabeth line may function but if you’re not travelling east-west, tough.
If you have tears to shed, hold them back now, because we’re not talking about subterranean train drivers (who, coincidentally, are paid a bomb)
To quote the RMT general secretary, Eddie Dempsey, “fatigue and extreme shift rotations are serious issues impacting on our members health and wellbeing- all of which have not been adequately addressed for years by LU management.” Well if you have tears to shed, hold them back now, because we’re not talking about subterranean train drivers who constitute only part of the RMT membership and who are, in any event, paid from £64-£70,000 a year for their trouble. Station staff, for instance, do not have to operate in dark tunnels but have the admittedly demanding job of engaging with the public in stations. I was right behind the union when it took action against the closure of ticket offices, but this is another matter. The burnout experienced by station staff, maintenance operatives, signallers and controllers is not so intolerable, I’d suggest, that they can’t work 35 hours a week. Aslef, the train drivers’ union, is not striking – well it hardly needs to, given that the RMT is making it impossible for their drivers to function – and it is negotiating an deal with Tube management for 34 hour week working rosters and a four day week.
The RMT’s Eddie Dempsey has plainly taken to heart the example of his predecessor, Mick Lynch, for whom militancy was his default mode. He never gave the impression that passengers were anything other than a useful means of bringing pressure to bear on TfL. And now we’ve got the same tactics from the new man who, like Dr Who, is always the same as regards readiness to srike, regardless of who happens to be General Secretary. As ever, it’s the poor bloody commuters who are leverage for the RMT’s standoff with TfL management. It’s just as well they don’t rely on public support for their strike, because mutinous resentment is about the kindest way of putting the public’s view.
If I were the Mayor, I’d be kept awake by the prospect of this strike…because it was one of his pre-election commitments that strikes wouldn’t feature on his watch. Perhaps, yet again, he can find enough money down the back of the sofa in contingency funds to make up to TfL for the sheer cost of funding any concessions on working hours. That seems unlikely, given TfL’s existing budget shortfall, but who knows? But if I were Rachel Reeves I would be even more worried. If the only way of funding national debt is through growth then bringing to a standstill one of the two parts of the country (the other being the south east) that give more back to the Treasury than they take isn’t going to help. London’s economy is the government’s business, and this strike is going to cripple it. I’d say myself that it’s an argument for banning strikes by public transport unions – too much depends on them functioning.
But if I were Eddie Dempsey, I’d be careful what I wished for. Granted the driverless DLR is also involved in the strike, but this action can only advance the argument that if drivers are so very fatigued by their job, then their job may be better automated. Many of us would hate that, but the more trigger happy the RMT gets, the plausible that prospect looks.
Meanwhile, start thinking about investing in walking shoes. Shanks’ pony may be your best option for getting to work and back next week.
Melanie McDonagh is a columnist at The London Standard
