Another rail strike looms

Union set to bring ScotRail network to a halt

A RAIL union has announced another strike in Scotland amid increasingly bitter pay disputes.

ScotRail members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) will walk out on October 10.

The union said its members had been offered a 5 per cent pay rise, describing it as a real-terms wage cut because of the soaring rate of inflation.

Rail unions are staging a series of strikes in early October over pay, jobs and conditions which will cripple services across the UK. RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: ‘ScotRail knows this offer is not good enough and needs to take into account the escalating cost of living crisis.

‘Our members refuse to be made poorer and will exercise their industrial strength to let ScotRail know that they will not rest until they are paid what they deserve.’

Phil Campbell, ScotRail’s head of customer operations, said: ‘This will have significant consequences for the service we are able to offer our customers.’

He added: ‘We will update our customers in the coming days on the full extent of the impact of industrial action.’

But yesterday also saw GMB union members employed by Scotland’s local councils accept a pay offer following strikes by waste workers. The deal will provide a flat £1,900 increase for staff earning less than £39,000 per year, backdated to April 1.

Staff at Scotland’s exams body have also accepted an improved wage offer. A spokesman for union Unite said workers at the Scottish Qualifications Authority agreed the new pay deal which was put to them after they took strike action for the first time.