London’s Mayor has launched an angry attack against unions as the latest Tube strike got under way last night, describing the industrial action as “irresponsible politically motivated nonsense.”
Boris Johnson said the series of 24-hour stoppages by the Rail Maritime and Transport union and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association were a “political attack” on the coalition Government.
Activists started mounting picket lines outside Tube stations as thousands of workers prepared to strike from 7 p.m. yesterday, which is causing travel chaos during today’s morning rush hour.
Mr Johnson will use his speech to today’s Conservative party con-ference in Birmingham to fire a broadside at the unions and explain why Transport for London was planning to cut 800 mainly ticket office jobs.
Mr Johnson says: “We need to take account of the fact that some ticket offices are now selling fewer than 10 tickets an hour. We need to liberate staff to get out on to the platforms and concourses where they can be of most use to the travelling public.
“We have come up with a way of doing this that keeps a ticket office at every station that currently possesses one, and, remarkably, given the colossal budgetary pressures we face, we are able to do this with no compulsory redundancies.
“There will be no loss of earnings, and I cannot stress enough that all stations will remain staffed at all times. This is the package which the RMT leadership now demands is taken off the table before talks can resume, while their political lackeys now pretend that I should invite Bob Crow in for beer and sandwiches in City Hall.
“That is absurd, outrageous and wrong. We cannot reward the bad behaviour of militants whose objectives are plainly nothing to do with the terms and conditions of their members, and everything to do with a political attack on the coalition government and, to a lesser extent, on City Hall.”
Mr Johnson will also tell Conservative delegates that laws on industrial action should be made tougher, to raise the threshold for strike action, following similar calls from business leaders.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, called on the Mayor to stop his “posturing” and help negotiations over the job cuts to resume in a bid to break the deadlock.
Transport for London (TfL) is laying on more than 100 extra buses, increasing capacity for more than 10,000 more journeys on the river, organising marshalled taxi ranks and delaying or curtailing planned roadworks under contingency plans to deal with the strike.