WHEN WILL WE REIN IN THE UNIONS INTENT ON XMAS CHAOS?
As rail barons call string of new strikes...
RAIL unions yesterday threw the Christmas plans of millions into chaos by calling eight days of strikes.
Ministers were urged to ‘get a grip’ on the looming crisis amid threats of coordinated walkouts with other industries.
Hospitality chiefs warned the strikes would cost them millions of pounds at what is one of the most lucrative times of year and as they recover from the pandemic.
The RMT yesterday announced four 48- hour strikes between December 13 and January 7, forcing many revellers to cancel parties and shoppers to stay at home instead. Key dates such as Christmas Eve, Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve will be hit.
Ministers have repeatedly promised to pass laws to rein in such disruptive strikes. But there is no prospect of measures coming into force until well into next year.
RMT boss Mick Lynch denied he was ‘Mick Grinch’ when confronted about the scale of misery the walkouts would inflict.
He said: ‘I’m not the Grinch, I’m a trade union official and I’m determined to get a deal.’
But he promised to ‘coordinate’
strike dates with other union chiefs to shut down Britain, with nurses, civil servants and postal workers having also voted in favour of walkouts. Teachers are still being balloted.
Government sources last night insisted the
‘glimmering outline’ of a deal with the RMT was emerging but insisted ministers would not be bounced into a settlement.
‘We need to get a deal that works for all taxpayers, and that includes the taxpayers that don’t use the railways,’ said one insider.
Ministers are worried about setting a precedent with significant pay rises. Rishi Sunak warned his Cabinet yesterday that Britain faced a ‘challenging’ winter of strikes, inflation and
NHS backlogs. Around 400,000 people are waiting more than a year for operations, compared with just 1,600 before the pandemic.
Food prices and energy bills have soared, with inflation at a 40-year high of 11.1 per cent and warnings of possible power blackouts.
Downing Street said contingency plans had been drawn up to ‘mitigate some of the challenges expected this winter, including further strike action’.
The latest RMT action will see more than 40,000 workers at Network Rail and 14 train operators walk out for 48 hours on December 13 and 14.
They will do so again just a few days later on December 16 and 17, and then on January 3 and 4 and January 6 and 7.
No more than a fifth of trains will run and vast swathes of the country – particularly rural areas – will be completely cut off. Several operators rely on workers doing overtime to run a full timetable, and a union ban on this is part of the industrial action. Some trains will also not run the day after each 48-hour strike due to shift patterns.
The RMT has already staged eight days of national walkouts in a bitter row over pay and job security that has been dragging on since June. The union called off