Stations quiet on final day of strike... for now
AS the biggest rail strikes in 30 years entered their third day yesterday, around 80 per cent of services were cut, and the country’s train stations resemble ghost towns.
Manchester Piccadilly was no different.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) is in a dispute over jobs, pay, and conditions. Yesterday morning, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said “there’s a long way to go yet” in negotiations.
He said the union will continue to engage in a “constructive dialogue,” but warned that they must be careful over what they called progress.
“Most of the stuff our members voted very heavily in favour for action about are what’s on the table now and they have not diluted very much the stuff they want and that’s true of the train operators and Network Rail,” he said.
And rail workers standing on the picket lines in Manchester this week have been keen to highlight how getting what they want out of the action benefits rail users as well as workers. Speaking earlier this week, Dalbir Dhillon who is the assistant branch secretary for the RMT at the Manchester Victoria branch, said: “If we accepted their offer, we’d have to agree to all ticket offices being closed across the country, and our pensions ages being increased by another three years after only just having it being increased by another two years back in 2016.
“We’re not against the idea of modernisation, we just want to negotiate it.”
Northern train guard Steve Shaw, who has been in his job for nearly 30 years, told the M.E.N that rail staff are key workers and have been “let down”.
He said: “As train guards we are frontline staff. We worked throughout the pandemic. People got seriously ill with covid. To be fair to the company (Northern) they put measures in place to help keep us safe.”
Off the picket lines, government ministers are making their take on the strikes clear. On Friday evening, transport secretary Grant Shapps called on the RMT to cancel yesterday’s strike, branding the action “unwarranted” and accused them of “damaging the lives of everyday hardworking people that they claim to represent”.
No more strike days have been announced, but the RMT has committed to continuing the dispute.