• Office occupancy in London drops to 9% on Tuesday, down from 42% the week before.
• Occupancy in the UK as a whole falls to 10% on first day of countrywide rail and Tube strikes
• Since pandemic lockdowns were lifted at the beginning of the year.

UK Rail strike: On the first day of countrywide rail and Tube strikes, the average office occupancy in London plummeted to less than 10 percent, as many redirected their epidemic working methods and stayed at home.

Read More: UK opposition demands that the government “get the trains running.”

According to Freespace, a provider of office services, occupancy in the United Kingdom’s capital plummeted to 9% on Tuesday, down from 42% the week before. Since pandemic lockdowns were lifted at the beginning of the year, there has been a steady return of employees to the office, as reflected by the preceding figure.

Freespace, which has deployed over 140,000 sensors that assess building occupancy and environmental factors, reported that the average office occupancy in the United Kingdom in June was 22%.

Many offices outside of London, particularly in office parks surrounding Reading, have easier access to parking for automobiles, making them less susceptible to UK rail strikes.

But even this was half the amount of the previous week, when the national average was 40%.

Rail chiefs are urging unions to accept over 2,000 job cuts as the two sides attempt to resolve their differences in negotiations following the largest transport strike in a decade, which paralysed much of Britain.

Read More: After failure of last-ditch talks, rail strikes in UK will proceed

On Wednesday, disruptions are anticipated to occur. Thursday and Saturday are slated for additional strikes.