Tube drivers agreed to accept a pay rise that will take their salaries to just shy of £70,000 per year, and after the new Labour Government offered public sector workers pay deals worth about £10 billion.
Tube drivers currently work a five-day, 35-hour week. The four-day week plan would see no overall change in working hours, but sources said that in practice it would mean longer working days.
Underground drivers also enjoy 43 days holiday a year, thanks to a previous deal that saw time spent on shift but not working rolled up into extra holidays.
Walkouts by the RMT, the other Tube drivers’ union, were suspended last week after shop stewards said they had secured a “significantly improved offer” on pay and working conditions. No details of that offer have yet emerged into the public domain.
TfL’s letter to Finn Brennan, the Aslef London organiser, seen by The Telegraph, said: “By January 2025 we will set out a proposal for delivering an average four-day working week with a paid meal relief included in working hours, which means fewer hours at work, whilst improving the reliability and efficiency of our service and maintaining the current 35-hour contractual working week.”
Aslef called the proposal a “genuinely groundbreaking agreement” and claimed it would lead to drivers working fewer hours. The union said: “In every four-week pay period, you will be working 10 hours and four days fewer. This also means an increase in the hourly rate of pay.”