Efficiencies needed for a sustainable railway

EFFICIENCIES are needed to create a sustainable railway but the spike in inflation has put added pressure on pay, said Network Rail’s chief executive Andrew Haines ahead of the June strike action, the most significant for 30 years.

Mr Haines said: “NR has had very extensive conversations about pay and modernisation with the unions since December 2020, with quite a lot of progress made… [but] inflation has changed immensely, and there is now an expectation for pay rises at a level way beyond anything we’ve had in recent years, with people genuinely feeling the cost of living.

“There are some entrenched working practices in the industry and there was a hope that Covid would have made sufficient people see there was a more efficient way of doing things. But the positions are more entrenched than was hoped for.

“Previous agreements with the unions had not led to efficiencies, and with today’s passenger numbers – especially on Mondays and Fridays – that is not the path to a sustainable railway.”

Slow negotiations

Train operating companies are carrying out collective bargaining, but have been preoccupied with negotiating operating contracts with the Government over the last 18 months, so are not as far advanced as they could be. Any pay increase over the basic award depended on operational maintenance efficiencies being introduced to update existing working practices. Around 1800 jobs could be potentially lost out of 10,500 maintenance posts, but new technology such as drones and ontrain equipment allow inspection work to be done more safely. One hidden aspect of the strikes is that most of the engineering works booked a year in advance would be lost on the last weekend in June, costing around £15m spent on contractors, with little or no work carried out as engineering trains could not run and materials could not be delivered.