Tube strikes: Passengers warned of widespread disruption

The Night Tube launched in 2016

Tube passengers will face widespread disruption due to a series of strikes, unless last-ditch talks are successful.

The restart of the Night Tube will be delayed if the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) begins the first of its 24-hour walkouts on Friday.

Piccadilly, Jubilee, Victoria, Central and Northern line drivers are due to strike over claims new rotas will wreck their work-life balance.

"We are hugely disappointed," Transport for London (TfL) said.

It has warned there will be "severe disruption" from Friday morning when the industrial action is set to begin.

The planned walkouts are due to continue on different days until 18 December, unless a deal can be reached. Both the RMT and TfL have said they "remain open to talks".

Analysis

By Tom Edwards, BBC London transport correspondent

If the issues around this strike sound familiar, that's because they are.

Way back in the calm of 2016, the RMT went into dispute in part due to the Night Tube rotas. Then two separate rotas had been created along with two grades which kept Night Tube drivers separate.

Since the pandemic, those drivers have gone into the main rota and that's where London Underground wants them to stay with the Night Tube shifts split amongst everyone.

London Underground says it will mean four weekend night shifts a year per driver. It's hardly a surprise then that RMT drivers do not want it although the other drivers' union, Aslef, have signed up to it.

What it certainly does is make the lauded return of the Night Tube an embarrassing damp squib and does not bode well for industrial relations in these uncertain times at TfL.

Night Tube services on the Central and Victoria lines were due to resume between 01:00 and 05:30 GMT on Saturday.

Before the pandemic, the service ran on five Underground lines and the London Overground on Fridays and Saturdays, but was halted when lockdown began last year.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said the new working arrangements "would wreck the work-life balance of our members".

"No one should underestimate the anger this issue has generated amongst drivers," he added.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: "The unnecessary strike action threatened by RMT would delay many Londoners having another option to travel home safely at night and would hold our city back at a time when our culture and hospitality sectors have been devastated by the pandemic."

TfL has said the four weekends of Night Tube shifts which drivers would be rostered to do will be swappable.

Nick Dent, director of London Underground customer operations, said: "By making changes to Tube driver rosters, we have provided greater flexibility for drivers as well as permanent work and job certainty, something welcomed by all other unions."

A spokesperson for the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) said: "We're in touch with the sides involved in the London Underground dispute and our services remain available."