Commuters and tourists face lengthy disruptions to their journeys after London Underground maintenance workers voted to strike in a dispute over pay and conditions.

About 1,000 members of the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport) union at Tube Lines will walk out for 72 hours at noon next Wednesday and again two weeks later.

Although the turnout for the vote was only 361, the union said that the workers, who are employed by Tube Lines, voted by more than three to one in favour of industrial action in protest at a 4.85 per cent pay offer.

RMT officials said that the package was an inferior deal to one accepted on behalf of staff who had contracts with Metronet, the company that collapsed last year and has been taken over by Transport for London.

Bob Crow, the RMT’s general secretary, said that Tube Lines employees did the same work as those on Metronet contracts but were not prepared to be worse off. He added: “Tube Lines has made enormous profits on the backs of our members’ hard work, yet they seem to expect that they will accept an inferior deal on pay, pensions and conditions. Metronet workers can join a final salary pension scheme, but Tube Lines wants to keep the door closed on it, and Tube Lines members are also denied the travel facilities that Metronet staff enjoy.”

Tube Lines maintains track and trains on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines and operates emergency response units across the Underground network. A spokesman for the company said that it had made two pay offers – a one-year deal worth 4.85 per cent or a two-year agreement for 4.95 per cent in year one and inflation plus 0.75 per cent in year two.

The company said: “We are disappointed that the RMT is taking this stance. Passengers have every right to feel angry over the proposed action.”

More than 700 RMT members working as cleaners on the Tube are also going on strike in a separate dispute over pay, the union said. They will strike for 48 hours from 5.30am a week today in a campaign to win the “London living wage” of £7.45 an hour. It will be their third strike over pay.

Caroline Pidgeon, deputy chairman of the London Assembly’s Transport Committee, said that the strike would achieve nothing. “We have seen these threats before and fortunately often the strikes are cancelled but that doesn’t stop Bob Crow from holding London to ransom again and again.”

Members of Aslef, the trade union for train drivers, will today decide whether to stage industrial action over the dismissal of an East Midlands Trains driver who admitted passing a red signal around the time he was using a mobile phone.

The union says that the driver has been treated unfairly after an incident that was described by Keith Norman, general secretary of Aslef as “regrett-able but not unique”. Mr Norman said: “I felt that the honesty of the driver should have counted for something. It also, given his record, makes a mockery of saying that the discipline system is meant to improve performance. It is being used as a stick with which to beat our members.

“Our member is guilty of an error of judgment. It is a case for a firm warning, not for instant dismissal.”

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