London Piccadilly Line Subway Drivers Set for Strike in July

(Bloomberg) -- Drivers on London’s Piccadilly Line are to walk out next month.

A strike over working conditions and staffing levels will take place from 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday July 11 until 1 a.m. on Saturday July 14, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) said in a statement.

The timing coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump’s long-awaited visit to the U.K. on July 13, which is likely to met by protests. The stoptrump.org.uk website has called for a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square, with 54,000 people on the group’s Facebook page saying they are “going” and another 152,000 “interested.”

The Piccadilly Line links upmarket neighborhoods of Kensington and Knightsbridge to the tourist hotspot of Covent Garden, and also connects Heathrow Airport to the west of the capital. It carries around half a million passengers a day, RMT said.

Trump said in January that he had “canceled” a visit to London to formally open the new U.S. embassy because he thought the building was “a bad deal,” criticizing its new location.

It’s not clear how much time Trump himself will spend in London, with reports suggesting his meetings with Prime Minister Theresa May and the Queen will both take place outside of the capital.

Strikes on London’s subway network are common. One of the worst in recent years was a strike by thousands of workers in January 2017, which brought much of the network to a standstill.

--With assistance from Siraj Datoo.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Easton in London at jeaston7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Lee at slee936@bloomberg.net, Niveditha Ravi, Adveith Nair

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