Southern rail drivers to get £75,000 pay

SOUTHERN Railway yesterday offered train drivers a salary of £75,000 a year in an attempt to settle their long-running dispute.

Some 1,000 drivers were offered a bumper pay rise equivalent to an increase of 23.8 per cent over four years. It would see basic salaries for a 35- hour, four- day week, rise from £49,001 to £60,683.

Most train drivers also work a regular fifth day as overtime for an extra 25 per cent pay, meaning their salaries will be topped off with an extra £15,000. Southern relies on this extra day to run its full timetable for more than 300,000 passengers a day.

The pay rise has been given the green light by Southern’s parent company Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR).

It is desperate to end a bitter 14month dispute which began amid safety concerns over changes to the role of train guards and plans for driver-only operated trains.

Aslef, the train drivers’ union, has yet to accept the deal. It has denied asking for a pay deal to be included in talks over the dispute and is furious that Southern has used negotiations over salaries to try to settle the row which has caused misery for hundreds of thousands of commuters.

Passengers across Kent, Surrey and Sussex are due to face fresh disruption from June 29 when Aslef enforces an overtime ban.

The last overtime ban, which ran from December to early January, forced the cancellation of hundreds of services and saw some train lines closed for weeks. A GTR spokesman

described its pay offer as ‘very generous’ and said the announcement of another overtime ban was ‘both surprising and extremely disappointing’.

Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, said: ‘ We have been talking to the company over the last fortnight in parallel, but separate, talks about drivers’ terms and conditions, industrial relations and pay. The company’s failure to engage over driver- only operation is the reason our members will no longer work overtime – which, of course, is entirely voluntary.’

Aslef has twice agreed a deal with GTR but these have been rejected by drivers.

Critics have pointed out that drivers are voicing concerns over systems that have been in operation in the UK for decades, having been approved by safety watchdogs.

The introduction of more driver- only trains would give responsibility to drivers instead of guards to open and close the train doors. Unions claim this is unsafe.

But the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operators, said more than half of trains in Britain, including the London Underground, operate with drivers in charge of closing the doors. It argues that the change would reduce the time that trains have to wait at stations.

In April it emerged that the boss of Southern was paid almost £500,000 in 2016 while presiding over a year dominated by strikes and commuter disruption. Charles Horton’s pay packet came despite a £15.3million loss for GTR.

In accounts for the year to July 2016, bosses apologised and said: ‘The service we have been able to offer our customers has fallen well short of our expectations.’

Strike action meant that nearly one in three of Southern’s mainline and coast services were late last year.

It has even been suggested that the dispute caused the Conservatives to lose seats in last week’s general election. Many of their key seats were along Southern routes serving Croydon, Eastbourne and Brighton. Home Secretary Amber Rudd also came close to defeat in Hastings.

Talks between Southern and the RMT union over changes to the role of guards were adjourned last month.

Official figures recently showed the number of days lost to strike action has almost doubled in a year. The Office for National Statistics reported that 322,000 working days were lost in 2016, compared with 170,000 the previous year, with Southern’s crippling walkouts and the junior doctors’ strike largely to blame.

‘Misery for commuters’