AROUND 1,000 members of London Underground’s biggest union working for the privatised Tube Lines infrastructure consortium have begun voting in a strike ballot aimed at winning an equal pay deal.

The vote by RMT members, sparked by a pay offer inferior to the 5.1 per cent deal agreed for staff doing identical work on Metronet, will close on August 13.

“Our members on Tube Lines are doing the same work as colleagues on Metronet and it is a nonsense to suggest that Tube Lines workers should be left worse off,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

“Tube Lines’ shareholders have profited enormously from their PPP contracts and it is not as if they cannot afford to pay the benchmark deal that has already been set at Metronet and elsewhere in the industry.

“Tube Lines workers are justifiably angry at the inequality their employer is attempting to impose, but the company knows it can avoid a dispute by going the final mile,” Bob Crow said.