Overtime ban piles pressure on Johnson

Some 10,000 engineers, signallers, maintenance workers, train drivers and station staff are taking the action to force Mr Johnson and Transport for London executives to back down from their plans to jeopardise safety by slashing 800 jobs.

The ban on working overtime, which has become even more crucial to running the network as TfL begins to cut jobs, follows Tuesday's 24-hour walkout in protest at the risk to safety posed by management's cuts and will continue through to further 24-hour strikes on October 3, November 2 and 28.

Tube workers' union RMT leader Bob Crow emphasised that bosses had already axed 250 jobs "via the back door" and asked: "How can the unions negotiate around a policy that is already being implemented?

"Staffing levels are already at critical point and talks must be reconvened on the basis that cuts imposed without negotiation and without agreement are brought to a halt," he insisted.

Mr Crow asserted that Tube bosses' declarations to the media during the strike that there were "no plans" to leave stations unstaffed "have now been exposed as bogus.

"Stations are being run unstaffed on a regular basis in contravention of safety regulations and that scandal will escalate as management try to smuggle their cuts in via the back door by failing to fill vacancies," he declared.