First day of new rail and tube strikes begins in disputes over pay, job security and conditions
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Many train platforms will be eerily quiet today on the first day of new rail strikes. Commuters and other travellers are facing further disruption over the next three days on rail, tube and bus services.
slow negotiations, painful negotiations moving over all the place, absolute lack of clarity in what it would take to call the strike off, shifting goalposts. They’re not good and we’re desperate to bring this to a resolution in a way that’s affordable for the country and which avoids the pain for my colleagues.
This is the biggest strikes that we’ve seen perhaps for 30 years on the railway and that’s because the employers, myself and the rail operators, supported by the government are saying the economic crisis which Covid has precipitated demands that we modernise.
TSSA members have not taken industrial action for a very long time in the majority of cases. It’s not something that we take lightly, it’s something that we take seriously.
What we need to resolve this dispute is a pay rise which reflects the cost of living increase that is affecting most people in this country very severely, we need job security …and we require guarantees from the employers that they are not going to rip up people’s contracts of employment, that they are not going to change conditions of working in the way we’ve seen for example at P&O.
What’s slightly disingenuous is that we have zero pay offer from the train operating companies, we have zero guarantees around conditions of service and we have zero guarantees around job security.
So while we’re talking to Network Rail and Mr Haines and his team are sat round the table with us, and we’re trying very very hard and he’s right it’s painful, we’re trying very very hard to make progress with them. Unfortunately we’ve got 15 train operators who are being told by the Department of Transport by Mr Shapps that they are unable and have no mandate to even sit around and make an offer.
Clearly job security is paramount and many of our members haven’t received a pay rise in three years despite being key workers, despite working through the pandemic. Job security, pay is important and protection of condition of service.
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