London tube staff threaten New Year's Eve strike

Workers on London's underground railway threatened transport chaos by voting yesterday to strike on New Year's Eve, a day when the city's creaking transport system is always packed with revellers.

The RMT trade union said London Underground signals and line control staff voted overwhelmingly to strike on December 31 and January 4 to protest at their pay, conditions and proposed job cuts on the world's oldest city subway network.

"The strike would affect the entire network. You can't run a network without signallers," said a spokesman for the union, adding 330 workers would walk out. "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 a spokesman for London Underground said talk of a shutdown was exaggerated.

"We will be able to run a service over New Year's Eve. We are planning our operations now in order to do so," she said. London Underground did not say how extensive services would be.

Last-ditch talks to avert a strike, the latest stage in a four-year dispute over working hours and conditions, ended yesterday night without agreement but were scheduled to resume this morning.