Unofficial strike action halted work on the Tube line on Monday as electricians walked off the project for the second time in five days. The one-day stoppage the previous Thursday followed a safety scare at Westminster Station.
Monday鈥檚 walkout happened after electricians discovered that operatives employed by a civils contractor, an Aoki-Soletanche joint venture at Southwark Station, had been carrying out work that was part of Drake & Scull鈥檚 contract.
The situation was resolved later the same day and electricians returned to work on Tuesday.
Bechtel鈥檚 拢10m bonus, to be awarded if the line is finished by 2000, is in addition to its 拢13m fee for managing the project.
A London Underground insider said: 鈥淭here is a school of thought that says now the dome link from central London is guaranteed, with services from Waterloo, there is no big rush this side of the millennium to complete the final phase.鈥�
Bechtel was unavailable for comment. However, a JLE source said Westminster would meet its deadline of late autumn. 鈥淓veryone working there is earning well, and even allowing for the latest stoppages, there shouldn鈥檛 be any delays to the finishing schedule,鈥� he said.
In a final push to complete the line, M&E contractor Drake & Scull has postponed until mid-November a series of redundancies scheduled for this month.
The action came as electricians鈥� union the AEEU sent ballot papers to more than 18 000 members, who will vote on a pay deal agreed between employers and the union.
Union officials spent most of last week lobbying electricians to accept the deal, which guarantees them a 28% pay increase over two years, but reduces the travel allowances traditionally paid to electricians.
AEEU national officer Paul Corby said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 up to the membership now. This deal involves new money above the rate of inflation and I can tell electricians there is no better offer coming from employers.鈥�
Corby hit back at the London electricians, who have staged a series of wildcat strikes in protest at the deal and have stopped work on high-profile London projects including the Millennium Dome, Royal Opera House and JLE.
He said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 outrageous some of the things that electricians working on projects like the JLE have said about the union. The JLE electricians have had good representation from this union.
鈥淭he strike action has made negotiating this deal harder as employers asked why they should negotiate with us while all this [unofficial strike action] is going on. It鈥檚 been a complex negotiation.鈥�
Corby added that strikers had broken an agreement not to take unofficial action to resolve disputes.
