LONDON’S transport workers are “caught in a stalemate” between Tory ministers and Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said today.

Transport for London (TfL) is under government pressure to find savings after the Covid-19 pandemic caused massive financial losses and Mr Khan, who oversees the local government body, is “offering our members’ terms and conditions as a hostage to get funding,” Mr Lynch said.

The union’s members at London Underground walked out today on the fifth 24-hour strike this year as part of a dispute over pay, working conditions and job cuts.

The industrial action, which also involves some staff on the London Overground network, coincided with London United bus workers beginning a 48-hour walkout organised by the Unite union.

The bus strike, affecting services in the west and south-west of the city and parts of Surrey, follows warnings from the union of severe cuts to services.

The action was sandwiched between national RMT and TSSA strikes by workers at Network Rail and several train operating companies on Thursday and Saturday as Britain’s “summer of discontent” escalates.

Mr Lynch criticised how transport services in London are managed, saying: “It’s very difficult for us to know what’s going on.

“There’s not any meaningful discussion between us and the employer because the employer doesn’t know how much money it’s going to have. That’s not a way to run a major global city.”

TfL is heavily reliant on income from fares and has been forced to repeatedly negotiate short-term funding packages with ministers after passenger numbers plummeted during the pandemic.

Mr Khan accused Downing Street of “deliberately provoking” strikes that could “harm the capital’s recovery” from the Covid crisis.

He said: “In January, the amount of people using the Tube was about 45 per cent versus pre-pandemic [levels]. It’s now more than 70 per cent.

“I worry that next week, when public transport is running fully, we’ll have fewer people using public transport, which limits our ability to make a full recovery sooner.”

RMT also hit out at plans by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to effectively fire and rehire railway workers on worse conditions by using section 188 regulations to impose new contracts on staff.

The “increasingly desperate and out-of-touch” minister should “enter meaningful negotiations” instead, Mr Lynch said.

Manual Cortes, general secretary of white-collar transport union TSSA, condemned Mr Shapps for his “anti-worker nonsense,” adding: “Tightening the screw on unions won’t resolve the Tory cost-of-living crisis.”