Tube workers to stage crippling strikes over safety fears

The two main unions have given London Underground 48 hours to agree to nine demands or they will ballot 7,500 staff on Thursday.

The demands are so strong and wide-ranging there is little or no chance of agreement within the next two days.

Unions are confident of "overwhelming support" for the strike call which could hit the entire network with pickets outside all stations. The first stoppages would take place from the middle of next month.

The RMT and TSSA want to stop non-union staff getting jobs and are calling for a ban on agency workers and sub-contractors working on overground lines recently taken into Tube control.

They have also issued demands on safety and staffing issues.

A spokesman for Transport for London, parent company of the Tube, condemned the unions for threatening "disruption to millions of Londoners".

He added: "All the issues raised by the RMT and TSSA can and should be addressed through the normal negotiating procedures.

"The process has not broken down and it would be totally unreasonable to curtail it by threats of strike action which can only lose staff pay and inconvenience the public to no purpose whatsoever."

Bob Crow, leader of the RMT, said planned changes to staffing levels and ticket office closures - revealed by the Evening Standard last year - "put our members' and passengers' safety at serious risk".

Each of the nine issues is "serious in its own right, but together they amount to a fundamental and unacceptable attack on staffing across the network which strikes at the very heart of its safe operation," said Mr Crow.

The row dates back to the Eighties when LU removed guards from trains. Mr Crow said: "When LU imposed driver-only Tube trains it assured the public and its own drivers that good station staffing levels would keep the system safe, but those assurances are now being undermined."

Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the TSSA, said that changes to the Tube's emergency plan - which would come into force if there was another terrorist attack, train crash or other major incident - would "undermine" the ability of staff to get passengers evacuated in time.

"LU has insisted on changes to its emergency plan that water down the staff required on duty and which our safety reps believe will undermine the ability to respond to emergencies and undertake safe evacuations," said Mr Doherty.

"LU has also sought to change its policy on when and how staff can refuse to work on safety grounds, in a way that is unworkable and in breach of legislation.

"Tube users should be as appalled as our members at the range of safety issues outstanding. I hope they will understand that LU's refusal to discuss these issues in the round left us with no choice but to tell the company that we are now in dispute."