24-hour Tube strikes over job cuts to cause chaos on Underground

Tube unions are planning to bring the Underground to a standstill in a series of walkouts over job cuts.

Commuters have been warned they face 24-hour strikes every month unless bosses abandon plans to axe 800 station staff.

RMT leader Bob Crow and TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty will outline a timetable for industrial action at a joint meeting tomorrow.

The first 24-hour strike will start at midnight on September 6, causing huge disruption for hundreds of thousands of Londoners and MPs returning to work after their summer holidays. A ban on overtime will also be in place, triggering major delays.

Strikes will take place each month until Mayor Boris Johnson withdraws a plan to cut staff and reduce ticket office opening hours at more than 250 stations across the network, unions said.

Transport for London has insisted savings must be found and said there will be no compulsory redundancies, insisting jobs will go as a result of natural wastage.

It says the changes to ticket officers are necessary because only one in 20 journeys starts with a ticket office transaction and 80 per cent of all journeys are made with an Oyster card.

Experts said London's economy could lose tens of millions of pounds if the strikes go ahead.

The 24-hour walkouts could disrupt services for up to three days a week because of "spillover" the evening and morning before and after a strike.

The two unions will now lodge the legally required seven days' notice of the walkouts.

Mr Crow accused London Underground management of "burning up safety agreements almost by the day in the dash for cuts".

He pledged staff "will not sit by while the tracks are turned into a death trap and stations and platforms are left unstaffed and at the mercy of muggers, vandals and other criminal elements".

Gerry Doherty, the TSSA leader, said the 800 job could be the "tip of the iceberg" because of Government-ordered spending restrictions.

Peter Hendy, the transport commissioner, is expected to meet the two union leaders in a private session in a bid to avert the strike. Howard Collins, LU's Chief Operating Officer, urged the unions to reconsider. He said: "It is simply not possible to go on with a situation where some ticket offices sell fewer than 10 tickets an hour.

"The weak mandate for strike action, which saw only around 35 per cent of TSSA members and less than a third of RMT members voting for a walkout, should resonate with the leadership. These threatened strikes are in nobody's interest, and should not go ahead."