London’s Chamber of Commerce & Industry policy director is right: the London Underground strike couldn’t have come at a worse time for businesses.
One entrepreneur today estimated she could’ve lost three clients as a result of the action, which is over pay rises and the potential for Transport for London (TfL) to make thousands redundant.
Simply having to defer meetings, if you’re an owner-manager, can cost dear — in the current climate, that’s hard-won business that may not quickly come back. Not that a giant retailer reliant on shop-floor staff will be any more happy about their lot tomorrow — the London Chamber estimates the overall cost of “lost productivity” will reach £100m.
The RMT union’s “attitude is a slap in the face to all hard-working Londoners and businesses struggling through a deep recession,” TfL’s Peter Hendy told the BBC.
It does seem churlish in such straitened times for some 2,800 RMT members to gripe over unacceptable pay rises. But RMT’s also striking to protect Tube workers, whose salaries start at around £29,000, who may have to pay with their jobs for the collapse of Metronet. TfL reckons on needing to axe around 1,000 jobs but RMT believes a £2.4bn cost-cutting exercise could result in layoffs closer to four times that number.
But what’s bad for most businesses may benefit a few — cabbies and bike rental businesses should do a brisk trade, while the London Cycling Campaign believes the 48-hour walk-out will be a fillip to cycling in the capital.
Canny retailer Evans Cycles is a model of agility-in-a-downturn, offering 10 per cent off bikes bought until this Thursday.
Broadband use is likely to surge, as it did when employees were snowbound earlier this year, as are the fortunes of remote access providers — especially those with pay-as-you-go models.
TfL’s laying on more transport to try and thin out the inevitable crush, but not at Wembley, where some 70,000 fans are expected to attend the England v. Andorra game.
According to Sky news, there will be no park-and-ride facilities to help ease the bottleneck (which is bad enough when the Tubes are running.) Surely an opportunity for businesses that move smartly.
Given that BNET’s exhorting readers to “find the upside in the downturn”, you could try seeing the strike as a sort of agility fire drill — another opportunity to test of your ability to respond to risk, to consider the benefits of working flexibly. But since we already have economic upheaval to test our mettle, I’m going with Ceri Radford: a plague on both their houses.
(Photo: JLCwalker CC.20)
