Industry reaction

TSSA General Secretary

Manuel Cortes has hit out at Conservative plans to introduce minimum service agreements as a “direct attack on workers and the general public”.

He said that the plans were “doomed to fail” because providing a minimum service level during industrial action would give passengers “a false expectation that lines are running normally”.

According to Cortes, it would lead to anger among passengers when confronted with “jampacked” trains on strike days.

He also labelled the prospect of minimum service agreements as “election bluster” which had little chance of being implemented, owing to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s failure to pursue the same policy when he was London Mayor.

“This is a naked attempt to stop working people taking action when their bosses are out of line,” said Cortes.

“It’s a direct attack on our democracy, workers across the railways, as well as the general public.

“This is a nonsense of a policy doomed to fail. It amounts to little more than election bluster. When Johnson became Mayor of London, he said he’d implement a no-strike policy. He was there for eight years and never did.”

TUC General Secretary

Frances O’Grady was equally condemnatory of the policy, telling The Guardian: “Suppressing the democratic right to strike is not the way to sort out our railways. The best way to tackle high fares, underinvestment, profiteering and poor treatment of staff is to bring rail under public control.”