Tube drivers start 24-hour walkout

Tube drivers start 24-hour walkout

Tube drivers start 24-hour walkout

Commuters on two busy Tube lines face disruptions this morning after London Underground train drivers started a 24-hour strike last night.

The strike started at 21:30GMT.

One hundred or so members of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) on the Hammersmith & City and Circle lines are taking industrial action in solidarity with a colleague at Edgware Road depot, who was sacked for attending a sports club while on sick leave.

The two lines are used by almost 400,000 travellers every day.

London Underground insists playing squash was “incompatible” with the criteria for sick leave, but the RMT claims the driver had been victimised.

The unions charged LU with “riding roughshod over its own procedures.”

Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT said: “It is a great pity that the company has devoted so much time, energy and public money on snooping on an employee guilty of nothing more than trying to get fit enough to return to work.”

Information and advice on alternative routes is available on London Underground’s website or from Travel Information on 020 7222 1234.