London – Subway maintenance workers agreed Tuesday to cut short a strike that disabled three-quarters of the sprawling Underground and left hundreds of thousands of commuters struggling to get to work by bus, by bike, by cab and on foot, Transport for London said.
The subway operator said members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers decided to return to work late Tuesday, ending a planned three-day strike over demands for a guarantee protecting jobs and pensions of workers at Metronet, a maintenance consortium forced into receivership by a financial crisis.
It was not immediately clear whether Metronet had agreed to the union’s demands.
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 arrangements being made to try to rescue the company, which has been unable to pay its debts.
Metronet’s management said it had given the union’s members written guarantees that their jobs were safe, publishing the guarantees on its website. But the union said the assurances were not unequivocal, and it promised to hold out until the demands were met.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the strike “wholly unjustified,” saying it had caused an enormous amount of trouble to the people of London.
The Tube carries an average of more than 3 million passengers a day over 255 miles of track. The planned three-day strike by 2,300 members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers started Monday evening, with nine of 12 lines shut down.
“I’ve had to get three trains and two buses this morning to get to work – it’s ludicrous. I’m already tired,” said Adrian Wells, 57, an accountant from Sutton, south of London.
