London prepares for two-day Tube strike next week

London's Tubes are expected to close for two days next week after the RMT union announced strikes.

10,000 workers are to protest on March 1 and March 3 from 00:01 GMT for 24-hours each time.

Tube chiefs told The Evening Standard that they expect “severe disruption across all Tube lines,” with stations closed and little or no service running across the network.

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It is advised that passengers are to work from home on these strike days with disruption likely to have a knock-on-effect to Wednesday and Friday.

The decision to strike was made after TfL announced they were to axe 500 to 600 tube station posts.

The RMT said that during the Acas talks “London Underground confirmed all the union’s worst fears that nothing is off the table in terms of the threat to jobs, pensions, conditions and safety”.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “Our members will be taking strike action next week because a financial crisis at London Underground has been deliberately engineered by the Government to drive a cuts’ agenda which would savage jobs, services, safety and threaten their working conditions and‎ pensions. The sheer scale of that threat was confirmed in talks on Wednesday.

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“These are the very same transport staff praised as heroes for carrying London through covid for nearly two years, often at serious personal risk, who now have no option but to strike to defend their livelihoods.

“The politicians need to wake up to the fact that transport staff will not pay the price for this cynically engineered crisis. In addition to the strike action RMT is coordinating a campaign of resistance with colleagues from other unions impacted by this threat.

Becky Buckle is Mixmag's Digital Intern, follow her on Twitter