Rail strikes ‘will play into hands of WFH zealots’

Boss’s warning over shutdowns on half our lines

MILITANT unions will ‘play into the hands’ of the work from home culture by staging the largest rail strikes in a generation, an industry leader said yesterday.

Half of services will shut down during the walkouts on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday next week, while those that do operate will run between 7.30am and 6.30pm only.

Travel on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday will also be badly affected due to the knock-on impacts of the industrial action by 40,000 members of the RMT union. it will cost up to £100million in lost ticket revenue.

Tim Shoveller, chief negotiator for Network rail, said the walkouts could put commuters off the railways just as passenger numbers and revenues were starting to recover from the pandemic.

He said that the action would be ‘a reminder of working from home full time and the benefits some people will see from that’.

‘It will do us harm,’ Mr Shoveller said. ‘it’s reminding commuters that for some of them, they quite like using Microsoft Teams to work and avoid travelling by train, that doesn’t seem like a great plan to me. it’s actually playing to the weakness of the situation – with Teams and Zoom being our biggest competitors now.’

A survey by the Office for National Statistics has found that one in seven adults who travel to work do so by railway. Half of them said would work from home if they were unable to catch a train.

Network rail chief executive Andrew Haines said the strikes were a ‘high-stakes gamble’ by the RMT to cause maximum disruption.

He also conceded there was no ‘real hope’ of a breakthrough in talks. Mr Haines added: ‘it’s absolutely a gamble by the RMT that somehow more money will be found, even though this is a particularly punitive way of harming the users of the railway and, as a consequence, the finances of the railway.’

Network rail said passenger services will be suspended in locations including Penzance, Bournemouth, Swansea, Holyhead, Chester and Blackpool.

There will also be no passenger trains running north from Glasgow or edinburgh. Open lines include the West Coast Main Line from London to Scotland via stops such as Birmingham and Manchester.

Services that run will do so for only 11 hours, meaning they will start significantly later and finish earlier than usual. The last train from London to edinburgh will depart at 2pm, compared with around 8.30pm on a typical weekday.

The total number of passenger services on strike days is expected to be limited to around 4,500 – 20 per cent of the usual figure. Only around 12,000 to 14,000 services will be able to run on the days following the strikes because signallers and control staff will not work overnight shifts that begin on the strike dates.

Some rural areas are likely to be completely cut off because they do not have automated signalling.

The walkouts will cause misery for anyone travelling to large events such as the Glastonbury Festival from June 22 and 26 and the Test match between england and New Zealand at Headingley starting on June 23.

Rail chiefs will publish the full emergency timetable tomorrow. Some of the 13 rail operators affected by the action – including Southeastern, TransPennine and Avanti West Coast – have told customers to travel only if necessary. Northern has urged passengers not to travel at all across the six affected days.

Steve Montgomery, chairman of the rail Delivery Group of train operators, said: ‘These strikes will affect the millions of people who use the train each day, including key workers, students with exams, those who cannot work from home, holidaymakers and those attending important business and leisure events.

‘Working with Network rail, our plan is to keep as many services running as possible, but significant disruption will be inevitable and some parts of the network will not have a service, so passengers should plan their journeys carefully and check their train times.’

The RMT wants pay rises for workers that recognise the RPI rate of inflation, which is currently 11.1 per cent, and a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies.

The union has claimed that Network rail plans to cut jobs and reduce spending –with an impact on safety. But Network rail and the Government have accused the union of an unwillingness to modernise work practices.

Mr Haines added: ‘Frankly it’s taken too long for some of our trade union colleagues to recognise that this isn’t some sort of class war, this is about the fundamental financial deficit.’

He said Network rail was seeking to cut between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs but this could largely be achieved through ‘voluntary severance’.

The first day of the strike will also include a walkout of RMT workers on the London Underground in a dispute over pensions and job losses.