Who’s on strike today and how will it affect you? Daily update for February 4

Tube workers and legal advisers are striking for two very different reasons today (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

It’s a quieter day when it comes to strike action in the UK today – but don’t expect to not see any disruption at all.

Waves of labour unrest have swept the nation for months, emptying railways, delaying deliveries and seeing some government services come to a halt.

Today, there will be two different picket lines – London Underground workers and civil servants.

Following two days of massive stoppages of London’s biggest commuter rail services, today it’s just the London Underground that’ll be impacted by strikes.

In the first of two days of stoppages, Bakerloo line workers who are members of the train drivers union Asleft (the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) will strike.

This means the route, which runs from Harrow and Wealdstone in suburban northwest London to Elephant and Castle in south London, will be closed.

All other London Underground lines will be unaffected by the strike.

Bakerloo line workers are walking out over safety concerns (Picture: Getty Images)

The union is in dispute over a plan it says will allow passengers to end up on sidings and depots due to a lack of safety checks.

Aslef dubbed the proposal as ‘flash and dash’, adding that riders would have to rely on hearing unreliable 50-year-old public address announcements to avoid being stuck.

Transport for London (TfL) managers are hoping to scrap a safety measure that sees train carriages physically checked to ensure they’re empty as part of cost-cutting measures.

Finn Brennan, Aslef’s organiser on the Underground, said: ‘This puts both passengers and staff at risk.

‘Previous experience had shown that removing physical checks means that thousands of passengers are unwittingly taken into sidings or depots.

‘We understand the pressure that London Underground is under to cut costs, but this cannot be at the expense of the safety of passengers and staff.’

TfL said: ‘The safety of staff and customers is our number one priority and we have never compromised on safety and never will.

TfL says all other London Underground lines will be running as normal today (Picture: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock)

‘No one wants to see strike action on the network, especially when we are trying to encourage commuters and visitors back into London. We will continue to work with Aslef and urge them to call off this action.’

The transport network said no changes have been made to safety checks but is hoping to end a requirement to check trains are empty at the end of a journey.

Due to barriers in the doors of carriages, TfL said, it’s not possible for customers to exit onto the tracks at sidings or depots.

After the walkout, early-morning Bakerloo services are expected to run as planned on Sunday.

Bakerloo staff will walk out once more next Saturday.

Alongside tube workers, legal advisers and court associates who are members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents civil servants, are picketing.

The advisers work for HM Courts and Tribunals Service which administers court services in England and Wales.

This is the second day of their four-day walkout over the rollout of Common Platform, which the union says has sent anxiety levels ‘through the roof’.

The government spent £236m on the case database system to ‘modernise the court system’. HMCTS says Common Platform has dealt with nearly 158,000 criminal cases and is live in more than 100 courts.

PCS has said the platform is ‘fundamentally flawed’ and has called for a sufficient risk assessment and a promise to cut no further staff because of it.

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Train drivers and legal advisers are set to strike today.