Most of London’s Subway Shuts Down

LONDON – Large swathes of London’s sprawling transport network shut down Monday evening after maintenance workers walked out in a dispute over job cuts, transfers and pensions.

Around 2,300 members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers left their jobs at 6 p.m. in a dispute stemming from the collapse of their employer, maintenance consortium Metronet.

Metronet’s workers maintain tracks, trains and signals on some of the subway system’s busiest routes, and have demanded assurances that their jobs would be protected under the arrangements being made to try to rescue the company, which has been unable to pay its debts.

London Underground said that two-thirds of London’s subway system, known as “The Tube,” would be inoperative for three days unless the strike was called off.

Metronet’s management said it had given the union’s members written guarantees that their jobs were safe, and London Mayor Ken Livingstone said the union was disrupting the lives of millions of Londoners for no reason.

“This strike is one of the most purposeless ever called,” he said. “All of the issues raised have been settled.”

But the RMT Union countered that it had not received any guarantees from Metronet that there would be no job losses, forced transfers or pension cuts. It warned of another 72-hour strike next week unless the dispute was resolved to its satisfaction.

The Tube carries an average of more than 3 million passengers a day over 254 miles of track.