Metro train drivers announced a two-week strike warning Thursday unless safety standards are raised, calling the 60-year-old metro system "a delayed-action mine."


Svetlana Razina, president of an independent union of metro workers, told a press conference that 350 drivers will be ready from Friday to strike for two weeks unless the union's list of demands is met. She said the union was not sure what form the strike would take, but that it would likely be a work-to-rule -- the practice of working to the strictist interpretation of job rules -- of the kind Razina's union carried out in April 1994.


The union will vote on what action to take at their meeting next week.


The drivers' complaints center around exhausting working conditions and decrepit equipment, which combine to make the metro increasingly dangerous, Razina said. Metro authorities have hidden evidence of breakdowns from their own personnel, she said.


The cash-strapped administration is "just involved in commerce," and has not responded to any of the union's demands -- including one calling for an audit of upper management, she said.


"They don't care about safety now," she said. "We don't want to make the passengers nervous, but we also don't want to put anyone in danger."


One metro official categorically denied the accusations. Administrators are not troubled by the union's latest strike threat, said Vladimir Bogomolov, deputy director of the metro's safety department. He had only learned about Razina's announcement when a reporter called him for comment, he said, calling Razina's new, independent union "not serious people." The entire metro system employs 27,000 people, he said.


Moreover, he added, Russian law prohibits metro workers from striking. Razina countered that a work-to-rule, since it does not involve a full work stoppage, was permissible by law.


Bogomolov said the metro has had no fires, crashes or other accidents this year, and that the machinery poses no threat to passengers.


Last year, by contrast, three accidents undermined confidence in the metro, widely considered Moscow's most reliable municipal system. The crashes, which injured 26 people, were the first serious ones since an escalator collapsed in 1982, killing more than 20 people.