Rail strike is back on ... and it’ll last three days
MILLIONS of passengers face travel chaos next month after rail workers agreed to three days of widespread strikes over pay.
The first national rail strike in 21 years was narrowly averted on Bank Holiday Monday when Network Rail offered a new pay deal to staff.
But workers have since rejected this offer and renewed their threat to bring Britain to a standstill – increasing the strike from one day to three to apply more pressure to the taxpayer-funded company.
The militant Rail, Maritime and Transport union claims poor wage rises have attacked workers’ ‘living standards’.
Members voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike yesterday, meaning 16,000 union members will join a walkout on June 4, 9 and 10, causing train services to be cancelled across the country.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said Network Rail staff had received pay rises eight times higher than other public sector workers in the past four years.
Condemning the latest threat to strike, he said: ‘Millions of hardworking people will be disrupted by this unnecessary and unreasonable strike action. I condemn it
‘Attacks on living standards’
wholeheartedly and urge the union to reconsider. By any measure, RMT members already get a fair deal.’
Network Rail originally offered a £500 pay rise this year followed by three years of increases in line with inflation.
It then offered a 1 per cent pay rise this year and about 1.4 per cent next year, promising to make no compulsory redundancies for the duration of the agreement.
The latest offer has now been rejected following fresh anger at the ‘money sloshing around for bonuses for senior managers’. It followed news that £60million was handed out in bonuses by Network Rail across its 36,000 staff last year.
But while some of this went to senior executives, thousands of workers, including engineers, were also entitled to bonuses worth up to 50 per cent of their salaries. Even the most junior staff earned up to £1,500 a year in performance-related bonuses despite the company missing every single target on punctuality last year.
RMT general secretary Mick Cash said staff were angry at ‘attacks on their standards of living’.
He said: ‘Our rail staff deserve a fair reward for the high pressure, safety-critical work that they undertake day and night.’
The union said it expected ‘rock- solid support’ for the strike action, and announced it had launched a new campaign to win over the public called ‘Our Jobs – Your Safety’.
Members of the RMT will walk out for 24 hours on Thursday, June 4, from 5pm and for 48 hours from Tuesday, June 9, at the same time. The workers, including signallers and maintenance staff, will also refuse to work overtime from June 6 to June 12. Mr Cash said: ‘The blunt truth is that this dispute could be settled for a fraction of the money being handed out in senior manager bonuses and to the train operators for not running services.’
New rules laid out in the Queen’s Speech will soon require unions to achieve a turnout of at least 50 per cent for a strike to be valid. In transport, health, fire and education sectors, 40 per cent of those entitled to vote must back the action.
But the new laws would not have stopped the planned strike action by the RMT.
The union said it achieved a 60 per cent turnout and that 80 per cent of these backed a strike, while 92 per cent voted for other forms of industrial action, which is well above the new thresholds.
Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne said: ‘It is clearly unacceptable for the RMT to massively disrupt the travelling public with strike action when we are ready to continue talks.’