Meanwhile it’s a manic Monday in strike-hit London
MINISTERS are said to be prepared to strike a deal with militant rail unions after London came to a grinding halt yesterday.
Industry sources say talks with the hard-Left RMT have been ‘intense’ in recent days as all sides work towards resolving a row over pay and jobs.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is understood to support a pay rise of as much as 5 per cent for thousands of rail workers in a bid to head off a summer of strikes.
It comes after 4,000 London Underground staff walked out for 24 hours yesterday, leaving workers battling to get on buses and into taxis, with ridehailing service Uber ramping up its prices. Some services were running, but the majority of stations shut.
Construction worker Miguel Basantes was stranded at Paddington station. The 54-year-old described the situation as ‘chaos’. ‘In Liverpool
Street there were crowds of people and I was waiting for 20 or 30 minutes. I don’t know how to get to work.’
Ministers want around £2billion shaved off the rail budget after bailing out the industry by more than £16billion during the pandemic.
TfL is cutting 600 jobs by not refilling roles when people retire or leave. The union’s executive is due to meet today and could announce a series of strike dates after its members voted in favour of country-wide walkouts last month. But it may decide to continue talks.
RMT boss Mick Lynch said yesterday: ‘We will not rest until we have a just settlement to this dispute and we urge the Mayor [of London] to stand up to the Tory Government who are cutting funding to TfL, rather than try to pick a fight with tube workers.’
Although some ministers support a pay offer in principle, it will be dependent on how much modernisation of working practices the RMT is willing to accept.
The Treasury is said to be resisting any large increase, as it would mean lifting the public sector pay cap. This was set at 2 per cent in April, or 3 per cent in cases where ‘productivity gains’ can be delivered.
But the RMT has suggested it wants pay increases to be closer to the RPI rate of inflation, currently 11.1 per cent.
The union’s resistance to modernisation has been branded ‘absurd’, with one industry source last month revealing staff were blocked from using mobile phone apps to communicate during the pandemic. Ministers believe millions could be saved through modernisation.
‘I don’t know how to get to work’