Millions of people are rearranging or canceling their plans in London this week because of strikes on the London Underground, the core of the city’s public transit system. Here’s a quick guide to what’s going on.
Who’s on strike and when?
Thousands of members of the union that represents most Underground workers — the RMT, short for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers — are walking out over five days.
They started striking at midnight Sunday. They’re scheduled to finish at midnight Thursday. But it will take several hours for trains to begin running again.
Transport for London, the municipal agency that runs the Underground, more familiarly known as the Tube, expects to restart services on the network at 8 a.m. Friday and be back to full service on all lines by midmorning.
Why are they striking?
The union says that the Tube’s management “refused to engage seriously with union demands on pay, fatigue management, extreme shift patterns and a reduction in the working week,” and accused it of “failing to honor previous agreements made with staff.”
Transport for London said it was “working hard to resolve the dispute” and that it had offered a 3.4 percent pay increase to all London Underground employees.
The main sticking point, the union says, is its demand for “a small reduction” in its members’ workweek, aiming eventually to shorten it to 32 hours from 35. This is needed, it says, because the Tube has reduced its work force and its members are “feeling the strain of extreme shift patterns.”
Tube drivers were paid an annual salary of 65,000 pounds on average in 2024 — around $87,000, and well above the median wage for Londoners — but many other Tube workers earn less, and the hours can be difficult, sometimes beginning at 4 a.m. or ending at 1 a.m.
Claire Mann, chief operating officer at Transport for London, said the agency welcomed conversations about managing fatigue but “a reduction in the contractual 35-hour working week is neither practical nor affordable.”
What’s the impact?
The Tube handles more than four million trips on a typical weekday, according to Transport for London.
A week’s disruption is likely to cost businesses millions of pounds as more people work from home, events are canceled and fewer people travel to restaurants, bars and attractions. The Center for Economics and Business Research, a London-based organization, estimated there would be a direct economic cost of around £230 million, which includes the impact of lost working days by transport staff. But the indirect affect from reduced consumer spending would be even greater, it said.
The American singer Post Malone and the British band Coldplay have both rescheduled London concerts this week because organizers said it would be impossible to get fans to and from the stadiums safely without the Tube network.
The disruption could dent economic growth but statisticians note that it is difficult to isolate the impact of strikes from other economic forces. In the second half of 2022 and early 2023, rail strikes across Britain and other industrial action by doctors and teachers weighed on the economy. The effect of this week’s strike is more localized and short-term.
So does this happen often?
Tube workers have gone on strike repeatedly over the decades, but this is the first major walkout since 2023. One was canceled at the last minute in January last year.
Are any services still running?
The Tube was almost completely shuttered on Monday, according to Transport for London, with a few services on the suburban fringes of its longest lines, stopping well before the center of town. It is expected to stay that way until Friday unless an agreement is reached.
But not everything on the Tube map is a Tube. The Elizabeth Line, the sleek east-west service that opened in 2022 after decades of discussion and 13 years of construction, is running as normal.
So is the Overground, a collection of mostly Victorian surface rail lines recently given new names like Windrush and Mildmay.
Both the Overground and the Elizabeth Line are likely to be busier than normal, and they’re normally busy. The same goes for the city’s enormous network of bus services, which Transport for London also runs.
The agency urged people to consider cycling or walking. London has a growing if still patchy network of bike lanes, which also appeared busier than usual on Monday.
Then there’s the Docklands Light Railway, a “driverless” transit system in East London that politicians sometimes mention wistfully when Tube drivers walk out. That’s affected by a separate strike over pay and conditions, which is expected to halt service on Tuesday and Thursday.
Eshe Nelson, Stephen Castle and Esther Bintliff contributed reporting.
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