London Underground passengers face four days of significant disruption beginning next Tuesday after the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers confirmed its members will walk out across four separate twenty-four-hour periods between April 21 and April 24, creating what is expected to be the most severe bout of transport disruption in the capital since the strikes of last September.
The timing is particularly difficult, with hundreds of thousands of spectators and participants expected to descend on central London for the April 26 London Marathon, meaning that commuters attempting to travel in the days immediately before one of the city’s largest annual events will find themselves navigating a significantly reduced network at precisely the worst possible moment.
The dispute centres on a plan to transition London Underground drivers from a standard five-day working week to a four-day compressed schedule, a proposal that ASLEF members voted to accept but that the RMT has rejected on grounds of safety and fatigue, arguing that longer shifts introduce unacceptable risks across a high-frequency metro system where alertness is critical to operational safety.
TfL has described the action as “unnecessary,” pointing to an above-inflation pay rise granted to all Tube staff earlier in the year as evidence of good faith by the employer, while the RMT maintains that the working pattern issue is a structural concern that no pay settlement has addressed.
The Piccadilly and Circle lines will not run at all during the strike periods, with no service also expected on the Metropolitan line between Baker Street and Aldgate and on the Central line between White City and Liverpool Street, leaving large portions of west and central London without direct Underground connectivity.
The Elizabeth line, DLR, London Overground and Croydon tram services are all expected to run normally throughout the disruption, though TfL has cautioned that these alternatives will be significantly busier than usual and that journey times could be substantially longer for passengers switching to replacement routes.
Separate industrial action by bus drivers in east London will further compound the disruption on Friday April 24, with Unite the Union members at Bow bus garage walking out over rest periods and pay, affecting routes including the 8, 25, 205 and N205 that connect east London to central areas and Westfield Stratford City.
The strikes are not limited to the coming week, with further walkouts confirmed for May 19-20, 21-22 and June 16-17, 18-19, indicating that both sides are preparing for an extended period of industrial pressure rather than a rapid resolution at the negotiating table.
RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey had warned in March that the union had “serious concerns around fatigue, safety and work-life balance” connected to the compressed working week proposals, framing the dispute as a matter of principle rather than finance and suggesting the path to resolution requires substantive changes to the operational model rather than additional pay increments.
Progress in talks led to the suspension of the original March strike dates, an outcome that demonstrates agreement is possible if both parties engage constructively, but with April dates now confirmed and summer walkouts already pencilled in, the window for a settlement that avoids further disruption is narrowing faster than either side may publicly acknowledge.