Shapps to ban overtime for striking rail staff

Extra hours to restore train service will not be available to workers as DFT plans to ‘hit them in the pocket’

‘A traditional mistake during strikes is that you pay staff to put right the damage they’ve done’

RAIL workers planning to strike this month will be “hit in their pay packets” under plans being drawn up by Grant Shapps with industry chiefs.

The Transport Secretary is proposing to ban striking rail staff from claiming overtime to which they are usually entitled to return the service to normal as quickly as possible after a walkout.

Mr Shapps is determined that striking rail workers should not be allowed to “milk the system” by claiming overtime after “inflicting misery” on the public when they walk out on June 21, 23 and 25.

“The traditional mistake during strikes is that you pay staff to work overtime putting right the damage they’ve done. We won’t be making that mistake this time. Striking will result in a full and absolute loss of pay,” said a Department for Transport source.

The crackdown comes on top of plans to make it easier to bring in cover workers to break strikes, although this will require a parliamentary rule change that the Department for Transport cannot introduce before the June industrial action.

Ministers are also planning new laws requiring minimum numbers of rail staff to work during a strike to avoid a total shutdown of the network, but these are described as “medium term” changes that might take six months.

More than 50,000 railway workers are due to walk out this month in what will be the biggest dispute on the rail network since 1989.

In a separate row over pensions and job losses, London Underground RMT members will strike on June 21.

The strikes are set to disrupt the travel of millions of workers as well as people attending major music festivals including Glastonbury, concerts such as the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park and sporting events including the tennis at Eastbourne and Hurlingham, and the UK Athletics Championships in Manchester.

Mr Shapps is in talks with Network Rail, the Government quango that will draw up the emergency “strike timetable” that will prevent striking rail workers claiming overtime.

Rather than trying to return the train services to normal on intervening days and those after the strikes, there will be a restricted service advertised to the public.

“By doing the strikes in the way they are, the RMT is getting a week’s disruption for three days lost wages,” said the source. “The days between strikes are disrupted anyway because everything is in the wrong place. So on those inbetween days, we don’t try to run a normal service and pay railwaymen overtime to try to achieve that. We run a reduced service and do not pay the overtime.”

Labour, the trade unions and the organisation representing agency workers yesterday warned they would oppose plans to replace striking rail staff with agency staff.

The unions also threatened to take legal and industrial action over any attempt to impose it.

Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow chancellor, accused ministers of acting like “arsonists” by escalating tensions with trade unions, although she dodged questions about whether she would go on strike if she were an RMT member.

“The way to resolve this is to get people around the table, but the idea that you can replace a skilled train signaller with an agency worker – would you feel safe going on a train knowing that there was an agency worker rather than a properly skilled and trained-up train signaller?” she said.

Government sources claimed that was a nonsensical mischaracterisation of the plan, which was designed to enable rail firms to redeploy workers to cover for striking staff and only “possibly” use outside staff where necessary.

An RMT source said: “The Government is ramping things up. Unions will oppose any attempt to undermine their right to strike.”

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which represents recruitment agencies, said it would “strongly oppose any move to change the law”.