The Tube strike is unnecessary. As well as being a massive inconvenience for Londoners, it is damaging our economy and the reputation of our city.

It is a return to the bad old days of the Nineties when ineffective Underground managers made derisory offers to the unions who would then strike. An improved offer would be followed by another strike and finally a settlement higher than would have been the case if a reasonable offer had been made in the first place.

I wanted to end this culture of conflict when control of the Tube was finally passed to City Hall in 2003. I invested a lot of time in getting to know the leading personalities in the Tube unions and had many meetings with Underground staff.

Tim O'Toole, the new head of London Underground whom I had recruited, went even farther and met a majority of the workforce. I made it clear that we would never make an offer that we did not believe was reasonable. I also wanted to get away from the annual pay round to multi-year settlements. I made clear that if the strike weapon was used as a negotiating strategy I would never improve on the original offer.

The unions tested our will but in the three years after the transfer of the Tube, the number of shifts lost to industrial action was cut by 90percent and in the two years up to the last mayoral election had been cut by 98percent. We negotiated a two-year pay deal followed by a three-year deal. During the last two strikes by the RMT most of its members carried on working.

The 2007 strike was caused by the failure of the administrator to give a guarantee of no redundancies after the collapse of Metronet, the public-private partnership responsible for maintaining and upgrading some lines.

I met the unions and gave a written guarantee that after the return of Metronet staff to the public sector there would be no redundancies. In an organisation as large as Transport for London (TfL) and with many proposals for expanding services and building new infrastructure we would have had no problems honouring that deal.

I also left the incoming Mayor £1.5billion in TfL's reserves to fund this. After the new Mayor's decision to stop all new infrastructure projects except those that are contractually committed, he is unwilling to stand by the no-redundancy pledge.

My guarantee of no redundancies merely carried on the commitments given by the Labour Government when it transferred these workers to Metronet. The Mayor cannot be surprised if the unions feel betrayed.

Although Boris Johnson gave an election pledge to introduce a no-strike deal we know that not only has he failed to meet the transport union leaders in the 14 months since his election, but he did not even bother to send a letter asking them to consider a no-strike deal.

Instead of opening negotiations last summer, the Mayor made no offer to the unions, with the result that they submitted their pay demand in November. They only received a response from the mayor in February, just over a month before the expiry of this pay round.

The Mayor has no problem finding time to do his weekly newspaper column, endless photo opportunities and lead an active social life of opening nights, film premieres and society parties. He needs to remember that as Mayor he is the elected executive, as well as being chair of Transport for London.

The Mayor's 14 months of inactivity on the industrial front means that, unlike the last two RMT strikes, this one has caused massive disruption. The Mayor has to develop a working relationship with union leaders on the Underground. Even if public anger led a government to impose a no-strike law it is no more likely to work than in New York where legislation has banned strikes on the subway for years but has not prevented them.

No amount of bluster about no-strike deals or laws is a substitute for doing the day job.

Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London from 2000-08

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