Security guards at Waterloo International terminal will strike from 08:30 to 10:30 and 17:45 to 19:45 on Friday September 9 and Saturday September 10, and from 06:45 to 08:45 and 18:15 to 20:15 on Sunday September 11.

Their colleagues at Ashford International will strike from 05:30 to 08:00 and 16:30 to 18:00 on Friday September 9 and Saturday September 10, and from 08:00 to 10:30 and 16:30 to 18:00 on Sunday September 11.

At North Pole International RMT security guards will strike between 20:00 and 24:000 on each of the same three days.

"Our members' action last weekend was 100-per cent solid and reflects their desire to win a just pay settlement," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

"But rather than sit down with us and negotiate, Chubb have chosen to waste huge sums of money on futile attempts to undermine our strike action.

"We understand they have recruited scab security guards in Hungary, put them on a four-day training course, flown them into Britain and put them up in a hostel in Neasden before putting them to work on the Eurostar contract.

"That makes a nonsense of their claim that our action is having no effect, but it also raises serious further concerns about their cavalier attitude to the professional security services they are supposed to be providing.

"It smacks of desperation that a company should go to such extraordinary and expensive lengths to avoid negotiating a settlement with its own workforce, and it is astonishing that Eurostar should go along with it.

"This dispute will ultimately be settled around the negotiating table, and we are ready to talk as soon as Chubb are ready to acknowledge the strength of feeling among their own workforce," Bob Crow said.