Now misery of rail strikes is spreading to the North
TRAIN strikes are set to spread across the country after a militant trade union announced coordinated action on three railways.
Long-suffering passengers of Southern Rail will now be joined in their misery by commuters using Arriva Rail North and Merseyrail in a walk- out on March 13.
It marks the 30th day of strike action by train guards on Southern and will mean yet more disruption for hundreds of thousands of passengers across the South East. But the walks-outs – orchestrated by the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union – have now spread to northern Eng- land. Arriva operates local passenger services right across the North, while Merseyrail runs services in and around Liverpool.
The row is over changes to the role of train guards. Rail bosses want to strip them of responsibility for opening and closing the train doors, and give this task to drivers, who can monitor platforms through CCTV monitors.
The RMT claims this is dangerous, despite the system having been approved by regulators and used on trains across the UK for more than three decades.
Mick Cash, the general secretary of the RMT, has been warning for some time that the strikes that have plagued Southern could spread across the country.
Earlier this month Merseyrail signed a deal worth up to £700million with Swiss firm Stadler to build and maintain 52 driver-only trains for the Liverpool City Region. It plans to introduce these trains by 2020 and says none of the permanent guards or guard managers would lose their jobs. Arriva has also investigated using driver-only trains.
The RMT said more than 81 per cent of members at Arriva and Merseyrail voted for strike action, with 93.5 per cent backing action short of a strike.
Mr Cash says Arriva and Merseyrail bosses have failed to guarantee that guards would be kept on trains and that Southern had ‘snubbed’ an offer of talks.
Passengers on Merseyrail are likely to endure disruption on a daily basis from next Tuesday as guards are also refusing to work on rest days.
The RMT’s protest has received the enthusiastic backing of Jeremy Corbyn, who wants the railways to be re-nationalised.
But this has set him at odds with Labour-run councils including the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, which has embraced driver-only trains. Despite this the RMT said it was urging the public and local politicians in the area served by Merseyrail to ‘gather political and public support for RMT’s fight for a guaranteed guard on the company’s services’.
A spokesman for Southern said: ‘We asked the RMT executive to suspend any further action when they met today so that talks could take place, instead they have chosen to put their members through even more pointless industrial action.’
A Merseyrail spokesman said that changes to the way its trains were operated would result in around 60 ‘on-board customer service positions’ being created.
‘Snubbed offer of talks’