Rail Dispute Update – August 2022 Thousands of rail worker members of RMT will be taking further strike action on the mainline railway on 18 and 20 August. The government is still refusing to meet the RMT and are instead directing the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) and Network Rail to begin the process of mass redundancies and hugely detrimental changes to terms and conditions, including imposing longer working hours for less pay. What pay offers there have been do not address the cost-of-living crisis and amount to significant real term pay cuts. They also compare poorly with deals achieved where the government is not dictating terms, for example on London Underground (8.4%), Docklands Light Railway (7.3%) and Merseyrail (7.1%). Key points • The rail dispute is with Network Rail and fourteen Department for Transport controlled TOCs and involves over 40,000 RMT members. • We have been seeking to work with government and employers for almost two years to address the challenges facing our industry, including the jobs, pay and conditions of our rail workers. Intensive negotiations have taken place with Network Rail and, separately, with the Train Operating Companies under the auspices of the Rail Delivery Group. • No offers have been made that address the cost-of-living crisis. Instead at the direction of the government the employers want to make mass redundancies and increase the working week by five hours for new entrants and abolish collective bargaining over pay. The employers literally want rail workers to work more for less. This attempt to create a race to the bottom will also store up future industrial relations problems by creating a two–tier workforce. The employers have not ruled out using the “More Hours, Less Pay” model for current employees by giving them notice on their existing contracts and imposing new contracts. • It is also clear that the government is directly controlling the dispute. Network Rail negotiators have indicated they have to refer back to the government throughout the negotiations. The TOCs are even more closely entangled with the government. Legal opinion secured by the TUC has shown that the TOCs must take their mandate on all issues relating to pay, employment and conditions from the Secretary of State and, as Grant Shapps has now admitted, he must sign off any deal. In addition, in any dispute the TOCs must agree a ‘dispute handling policy’ with the government and give the Secretary of State
complete control of the dispute. The sanction for failing to do this is that the TOCs must pay for revenue lost during the strike action. RMT has estimated that this indemnity for the TOCs is over £120m to date. What’s even more shocking is as the vast majority of the TOCS involved in the dispute are fully or partly foreign owned, this bail out is worth £100m of taxpayer’s money for these fully or partly owned foreign owned companies
• As well as prolonging the dispute by bailing out the TOCs the government has introduced dangerous and inflammatory legislation to allow employers to use untrained agency staff to work during strikes and have confirmed they will bring in legislation as soon as possible to remove rail workers’ right to strike by introducing Minimum Service Levels. The government is hell bent on confrontation rather than negotiation. • The government claim they ‘bailed out’ the rail industry during the pandemic. In fact, the funding to make up the shortfall in passenger revenue was essential to keep the railways operating to keep people and goods moving to save lives and the economy - which is why rail workers were classified as key workers and could not be furloughed. The only part of the industry that was bailed out was the private operators who would have gone bust without government support to continue to make profits. • The government described rail workers as ‘heroes’ during the pandemic. Rail staff work all hours, seven days a week to keep the country moving. Far from modernising our railways the government now want to make compulsory redundancies with cuts to thousands of rail jobs. This includes removal of on-train and station staff, enforcement of Driver Only Operation on trains, closure of all ticket offices and the loss of thousands of safety critical infrastructure staff. This will reduce services and make our railways less safe, secure and accessible. This report shows there is widespread public opposition to the government’s cuts agenda for the railway and this other report clearly shows that it is rail fragmentation and privatisation that is the real enemy of modernisation. • The railways are back on track to recover from the pandemic with passenger numbers near to pre-pandemic levels overall. Moreover, as our population and economy grow protecting and expanding services will be essential for protecting our prosperity and climate. Our railways are green transport for the future which is why it is so short sighted for government to make these cuts. • The rail workers involved in this dispute include on train and station staff, cleaners and workers who repair the track and trains. Most workers in this dispute have a salary of between £25,000–£31,000. Despite the cost-of-living crisis most have not had pay rises for two or three years. Rail workers are angry that their livelihoods are now under threat when during the pandemic rail bosses have taken home £1m pay packets and rail companies have made in excess of £500m a year in private profits since the start of the health emergency. The reason cuts are now being proposed is so companies can continue to rake in profits, regardless of the consequences for passengers and workers.