Public faces yet more rail strike misery as union to ‘up the ante’
RAIL passengers across Scotland were warned last night to expect more travel misery after union bosses vowed to ‘up the ante’ in their battle with ScotRail.
Services across the country were cancelled again today as train drivers and guards walked out in the latest stage of their dispute over driver-only trains.
ScotRail insisted that threequarters of all trains were running as normal over this weekend but on many routes, both yesterday and today, only a reduced timetable was in operation while travellers on other routes had to cope with all their trains being cancelled.
Edinburgh to Dunbar, North Berwick and Aberdeen services were among the worst hit with all trains on these routes cancelled.
The same was the case with, among others, the Glasgow Queen Street to Dunblane and Glasgow Central to Inverness services. Travellers on these routes have been told to use replacement bus services instead.
Union leaders warned last night of more strikes to come in this longrunning dispute, which has already caused hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to the Scottish economy.
With talks stalled and neither side ready to give way, Mick Hogg, the Scottish regional organiser for the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, told The Scottish Mail on Sunday that train staff would ‘up the ante industrially and politically’ over the next few weeks in an attempt to increase the pressure on ScotRail managers.
Today was the last day of the current batch of seven days of strike action which have caused cancellations, slower services and various other problems across the Scottish rail network.
And although no new strikes have yet been scheduled, the RMT is now expected to authorise a fresh series of new walk-outs across the ScotRail network through the rest of July and into August. Staff are also expected to start handing out leaflets to passengers pressing their case as they try to win over the public.
The dispute is over Abellio ScotRail’s plans to make drivers – not conductors – responsible for controlling doors on new trains. The RMT claims these so-called ‘driver only operations’ threaten the ‘terms and conditions’ of conductors and are a threat to safety.
ScotRail argues that these driver only operations are already working well right across the network so there is no reason for the strike. Mr Hogg declared: ‘We are a million miles away from where we need to be. We need to talk about the real issue here while ScotRail wants to talk about everything else. There is no room for manoeuvre so we are probably going to have to up the ante politically and industrially.’
Mr Hogg said this would probably mean more strike days but that decision would be taken by the union’s executive committee next week.
But he also expected the RMT to start leafleting passengers to press their case. He said he appreciated there would be problems for the travelling public.
ScotRail spokesman Mike Connelly dismissed Mr Hogg’s claims, insisting that managers were willing to talk about the real issues. ‘It’s not about safety,’ he said. ‘We are making a firm commitment that there will be two people on trains and one of them will be responsible for opening and closing the doors. The driver will do that, allowing the other person to do more customer service.’
Mr Connelly said that ScotRail had made sure that disruptions were kept to a minimum, stressing that transport to and from the Open golf at Troon this weekend had worked well, despite the strike.
And he added: ‘We do not want the RMT to up the ante, we want them to get round the table in a real spirit of intent to discuss the issues, but so far they have refused to do so.’
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s transport minister, has already called on the union to end the strike action and to sort out the dispute by negotiation.
‘Get round the table in a real spirit of intent’