Now railway workers set to ballot for strike action
TRAIN staff threatened to bring Scotland’s railways to a standstill last night by launching a ballot for strike action.
Union leaders warned of a walkout over ScotRail’s ‘derisory’ pay offer, just days after the nationalised operator announced savage cuts to services because of a dispute with drivers.
Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth had just hours earlier held crisis talks with ScotRail bosses following a backlash over drastically reduced timetables, which start on Monday.
The twin attacks by the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union (RMT) and drivers’ union Aslef now risk making an already chaotic summer even worse.
Miss Gilruth was yesterday accused of having ‘no answers’ for passengers, who will see services on many routes finish hours earlier than normal. During an interview on the
BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme, she was unable to answer key questions about how long the emergency timetable will operate for or how the dispute with train drivers will be resolved.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said the union would ask members to consider strike action.
He said: ‘ScotRail needs to put its hands deeper into its pockets and start rewarding their staff properly.’
The crisis comes just weeks after ScotRail came under Scottish Government control. Many train drivers have been unwilling to work overtime or rest days, leading to a wave of cancellations.
ScotRail announced the temporary timetable in a bid to improve the reliability of scheduled services.
It is estimated that ScotRail would need an extra 130 drivers to end the operator’s reliance on overtime and rest-day working. But quango Transport Scotland has confirmed that only an additional 55 will be trained and ready to work by the end of the year, rising to 100 by June 2023 – which has led to fears a full timetable may not return for more than a year unless the dispute is resolved.
No driver jobs were advertised on the ScotRail website yesterday.
Graham Simpson, transport spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, said: ‘Train passengers will be deeply alarmed that what the First Minister has insisted is a “temporary” timetable could actually be in place for several months.
‘In her interview, the Transport Minister could offer no answers on when the public can expect a normal service to resume.’
Miss Gilruth told the BBC it was ‘right and proper’ for ScotRail to take forward negotiations with trade unions. She added: ‘This timetable is a temporary timetable and I don’t want it to continue for a minute longer.’
Kevin Lindsay, Aslef’s Scottish organiser, said ministers should ‘get back round the table for immediate, meaningful talks on pay’.
Asked if it could be the summer of 2023 before the temporary timetable is removed, Miss Gilruth said: ‘Absolutely not. We want the trade unions to come back to the table. But it is absolutely true to say that the network is dependent on rest-day working at the present time.’
Union bosses previously rejected a 2.2 per cent pay rise.
AS the ScotRail crisis deepens, ministers are clueless about how to resolve it.
Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth’s crunch talks with rail bosses over massive timetable cuts appear to have proved utterly fruitless – and now the unions are balloting for strike action.
The SNP’s promises of a nationalised service bringing new benefits to longsuffering passengers are in tatters – only weeks after the shift to public ownership.
Miss Gilruth is now reduced to urging the train drivers’ union Aslef to ‘continue dialogue’ with ScotRail – as she wants to avoid claims of ‘political interference’.
Isn’t it a little late for such concerns, given that rail travel is now under the direct control of the SNP Government?
If Miss Gilruth won’t ‘interfere’ to put an end to this lunacy, then who will?
After years of vocal opposition to privatisation, ministers have taken only about seven weeks to run one of our most important transport systems into the ground. They longed to be in charge, but now that passengers face months of axed services and delays, Miss Gilruth and her colleagues are desperate to wash their hands of the problems.
It’s an extraordinary abdication of responsibility by a Government that has left a trail of destruction in its wake over the past 15 years. Commuters are now looking for alternatives to unreliable rail journeys as the new – supposedly temporary – timetable kicks in from next week.
The SNP’s dedication to ‘net zero’ has been exposed as a sham, while its Leftwing rhetoric about the virtues of a nationalised railway has been revealed as little more than wishful thinking.
It’s time ministers faced up to the scale of the task ahead of them and strained every sinew to prevent the full-scale meltdown of a once-proud rail service.