The RMT union has confirmed that it is planning to extend its dispute over Night Tube duties with strikes every weekend until June 2022, unless the dispute is resolved.
The union says that drivers on the Central and Victoria lines will go on strike every Friday and Saturday from 8:30pm until 8am the following morning from 7th January 2022 until further notice.
The union has been in dispute with TfL over changes to tube driver grades. When the Night Tube was set up, a number of part-time drivers were employed to drive the trains, but recently, TfL merged the two grades enabling part-time drivers to progress to full time. That also means that existing tube drivers could be asked to work up to four weekends per year, if they can’t swap shifts with other drivers.
The union has made it clear that their strike mandate extends to other lines and will consider broadening the action if the Night Tube is restored to other lines next year.
RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch said: “If London Underground and the Mayor thought this fight for progressive and family friendly working practices was going away they need to think again.”
The ballot to continue the Night Tube dispute was 521 in favour of strikes vs 47 against, out of 1,127 drivers entitled to vote.
Honestly, sack the lot of them if they do this. I am a member of a union and I strongly believe in the right to industrial action. But said action has to be proportionate. This is anything but. I’d rather suffer the inconvenience that this causes then let these nutters hold the capital to ransom.
It comes to something when a union is out of step with its own members. There are bigger battles coming than running a service 2 nights a week, and the remaining members of the RMT should be saving themselves up for this, not fighting a fight that they will lose.
£50-70kpa and comfy benefits, they got paid night shift rates when there wasn’t even a night train service running, but the work-life is too appalling to fit in a weekend shift every 3 months?
I think it would be cheaper to scrap night tube/night overground and reorganise night buses to make them more attractive (create an express night bus service that more closely follows tube lines and stops within similar headway to night tube, possibly at a higher fare, maybe outside cap but within a season pass structure for night workers, and also including hopper transfers)
Not a terrible idea Miles. When you think of the cost of digging tunnels, then consider each tube train costs in the region of £15-20m, it’s not hard to imagine setting up a chain of express busses (no infrastructure expense, £100k per bus).
Few people actually enjoy the tube within the central tunnels anyway. It’s grim.