In April 2025, London Underground train drivers who are members of the craft union Aslef voted in favour of the implementation of a four-day working week to be part of pay negotiations that were taking place at the time.
Aslef, which represents approximately 80 percent of London Underground drivers, negotiated a settlement with management which reinstated the 30-minute paid meal relief (which had been taken away from all workers back in 1993). This reduced the working week for train drivers by one hour to 34 hours per week, and they then began the process of implementing a four-day working week for train drivers.
What has followed, which includes the RMT transport union balloting its members for industrial action, its successful strikes which took place on 21-24 April and calling further strike dates in May and June, is the culmination of a dispute over the implementation of the proposed four-day week in the train driver grade, and a bitter inter-union dispute between RMT and Aslef.
Aslef and the four-day week
In January 2026, Aslef’s regional organiser Finn Brennan posted on the District 8 blog that this agreed reduction in the working week would give train drivers an extra 35 days off per year with no loss of annual leave entitlement and would be voluntary, which means that drivers who do not want to work a four-day week (ie, 34 hours of work compressed into four days) could remain on a five-day week if they so wished.
RMT sees things differently. It has been pressing for a 32-hour, four-day week for all Underground workers for many years, albeit without success, but it also believes that squeezing 34 hours’ work into four days would make the job intolerable for drivers whose job involves spending long periods cooped up in a small cab at the front of their train, not necessarily knowing when their next toilet break, meal or cup of tea will be.
RMT also contends that the implementation of a compressed 34-hour week has been negotiated without due consideration to existing agreements that train drivers have benefited from for over 30 years. These include strictly prescribed maximum shift lengths, maximum driving spells, and the number of hours a driver can work before they have a meal break. RMT believes that as far as London Underground’s management is concerned, this is a done deal and there is nothing that either they or their reps can do about it.
On the assertion by Aslef that their four-day week proposal would be voluntary, RMT pointed out that London Underground management has thus added a voluntary element to what is, in essence, an imposed shorter working week, but without any guarantees that the voluntary element will remain with individual drivers if they transfer from one line to another or even from one depot to another on the same line. RMT is also concerned that train drivers who are new to the grade will be forced to accept this compressed four-day week and be denied the option of choosing any alternative.
Contradictions between Aslef and the RMT
Aslef has not pulled its punches in attacking RMT’s position. Its leaders have claimed that RMT has “opposed every improvement ever negotiated for train drivers … They refused to support drivers’ successful action to win payments for Boxing Day. They even opposed the extra payments drivers received for working during the 2012 Olympics!”
By way of context, RMT has consistently argued that any additional payments for Christmas working or for working during major events like the Olympics should be afforded to all London Underground staff and not just train drivers. Aslef, a craft union whose focus is exclusively on winning improvements to the terms and conditions of train drivers and only train drivers, doesn’t care a jot about non-drivers who are members of their own union, let alone those who aren’t!
Despite RMT’s efforts to organise its members across all grades, disputes that involve train drivers on London Underground go back many decades. In 1989, hundreds of drivers across the network took part in unsanctioned ‘wildcat’ strike action in a dispute over One Person Operation(OPO) allowance, which was paid to drivers who staffed their train alone, without a guard. The dispute ran for months, with management largely powerless to stop the walkouts, despite calls from Tory MPs for the company to discipline those involved.
While the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), the predecessor of the RMT, did not officially sanction the strikes at the time, hundreds of NUR members took part and won an increase in pay.
Train drivers and their struggles
Train drivers were involved in another separate dispute in the early 1990s, when both RMT and Aslef secured a shorter working week for their train driver members. Under the deal, drivers forfeited a portion of their annual pay rises to pay for a reduction to their working week, while non-driver Underground workers remained on a 40-hour working week, but received higher pay rises.
It was this dispute that set in train (no pun intended) the steady separation of drivers from the rest of London Underground’s staff with regards to their terms and conditions. It was not until 1996, through a period of prolonged struggle, that non-drivers won a five-day working week (previously it had been a five-and-a-half-day week). Meanwhile, drivers have received additional payments for working Boxing Day since 2011, which were not awarded to non-train drivers until last year. Train drivers working on Boxing Day are taken from a pool of volunteers, while other London Underground workers are compelled to work Boxing Day by management.
The fragmentation of solidarity
Having organised the majority of train drivers in London Underground for over 40 years, Aslef has led this fragmentation of terms and conditions along sectarian lines among the Underground’s staff, while the RMT has struggled to maintain some form of unity across all the grades that it organises. It is this conflict that defines the current train drivers’ dispute on London Underground. Aslef organisers accuse their RMT counterparts of acting to the detriment of train drivers, while RMT accuses Aslef of acting to the detriment of everyone else.
The logical response to this situation is to create a single trade union to represent all the workers in London Underground and the wider rail industry. Yet this simple logic of unity in struggle is in very short supply in such cases. It is, in fact, a well-worn bourgeois tactic to ensure that in every major industry there are at least two unions representing the staff, whose leaders can be relied upon to undermine each others’ struggles in times of danger to the employers. It is a sign of the size and significance of the NHS’s workforce that it has a record 12 unions to represent all its various staff!
As far as the railways are concerned, train drivers know that their immediate interests will be served by Aslef, which consistently places their advancement above any and all other priorities, while the RMT tries valiantly to maintain unity across all the grades in which it organises. Meanwhile, management are doing everything possible to undermine the unity of the workforce by peeling apart the various grades with small bribes, thus creating distinctions between their pay, conditions and terms of employment.
Of course, even the most privileged section of the workforce eventually loses out as a result of succumbing to these manoeuvres. A divided workforce is far easier to manipulate, so that in the end, the pay, conditions and pensions of the entire workforce can be steadily degraded. By allowing the management to pick on the lower grades first, the drivers are simply ensuring that when the axe comes for them, there will be nobody to stand beside them in their struggle.
