Business Notes Labor Strike!

The episode was brief but embarrassing. Leaders of the British National Union of Railwaymen last week called a strike against London Regional Transport. LRT runs the city's underground subway system, on which about 2 million passengers daily depend. Most of the transit union's 15,000 members, however, cavalierly dismissed the action, and more than 75% of the city's trains ran on schedule. The strike was abandoned after just eleven hours, a remarkable event in a country where strikes were once as traditional as afternoon tea.

The union's executive committee defied the 1984 Trade Union Act, which requires a rank-and-file vote before leaders can call a strike. The walkout followed LRT's decision to extend the routes on which trains operated by one man would run.

The failed walkout did nothing to strengthen the position of British labor unions, which was battered earlier this year in a national coal strike. Concluded an editorial in the Guardian: "Union activists can misjudge the mood among the poor bloody infantry and find themselves galloping off at the head of a phantom army."