Londoners and holidaymakers face a rough start to the new year as London Underground unions announced strike action in a long-running dispute over jobs and conditions.
Members of the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union supported a walkout by 93% and will now stage 24-hour strikes on New Year's Eve and on January 4 unless the row is resolved.
"The strike would affect the entire network. You can't run a network without signallers," a union spokesman said. "The depth of the disruption would be determined partly by how much of a token service management were able to run by getting managers to do our members' work. I would suspect that the network would be as good as closed down."
But London Underground (LU) insisted that talk of a shutdown was overblown.
"We will be able to run a service over New Year's Eve. We are planning our operations now in order to do so," a London Underground spokeswoman said.
The RMT said it was meeting managers for last-ditch talks to avert the planned strike action, the latest twist in a four-year dispute over working hours and conditions.
Signal staff are on a wide range of salaries and working conditions and LU wants to standardise them. But Bob Crow, the RMT leader, said the proposed changes will lead to the loss of 76 jobs, longer shifts and shorter rest time between shifts.
The chairman of the London Assembly, Brian Coleman, said: "This is outrageous. You'd think during the season of goodwill the tube unions would leave Londoners alone ... Yet all these unions want to do is make sure the start of the new year is a miserable one."
Meanwhile, LU announced it would run a special service on the Piccadilly line tomorrow because of a strike by members of the drivers' union Aslef.
Passengers were advised to seek alternative routes wherever possible and leave extra time for their journey. The drivers are staging a 24-hour walkout in support of a colleague who was demoted after passing four red signals. Extra bus services will be laid on, but LU warned of delays, with tubes to Heathrow airport running every eight minutes.
Dan Bridgett, of the London Chamber of Commerce, said of the Piccadilly line strike: "The unions are sticking two fingers up at businesses and their customers ... To take a major arterial route into London out of action on one of the busiest days of the year is the last thing that either shopkeepers or shoppers want."
The Liberal Democrat London Assembly transport spokeswoman, Lynne Featherstone, said: "Of course employees are justified in raising concerns over any number of issues with their employers. However, bullyboy tactics of threatening strike action every time union bosses are unhappy with negotiations is bad for business, bad for the image of London and bad for the travelling public."
