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Railway staff have voted overwhelmingly to strike in a dispute over jobs, pay and situations, the RMT union has introduced.
The outcome was introduced inside 4 hours of the poll of greater than 40,000 railway staff closing.
The RMT mentioned: “Railway staff have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike motion throughout Community Rail and the prepare working corporations, within the greatest endorsement for industrial motion by railway staff since privatisation.”
Of the 71 per cent of these eligible to vote, 89 per cent backed a strike – representing 63 per cent of the workforce balloted, and greater than 25,000 staff.
RMT members working for Community Rail and 14 out of 15 of the prepare operators voted for “strike motion and motion wanting strike”.
The prepare operators whose RMT members voted to strike embrace Avanti West Coast, Higher Anglia, GWR, LNER, Northern and South Western Railway.
A mixture of Community Rail signallers and prepare employees strolling out might shut down a lot of the rail community.
LNER issued an announcement saying: “We’re conscious of potential industrial motion introduced by the RMT. We can be reviewing the end result of this proposed industrial motion and can present updates on how this would possibly influence LNER companies.”
Employees working for GTR – masking Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Categorical and Nice Northern – voted solely in favour of “motion wanting strike”.
The final secretary of the RMT, Mick Lynch, referred to as the vote “a vindication of the union’s strategy” that “sends a transparent message that members desire a respectable pay rise, job safety and no obligatory redundancies”.
He mentioned: “Our NEC [National Executive Committee] will now meet to debate a timetable for strike motion from mid-June, however we sincerely hope ministers will encourage the employers to return to the negotiating desk and hammer out an inexpensive settlement with the RMT.
On the similar time, the union says it’s “demanding pressing talks with Community Rail and the 15 prepare working corporations that have been balloted to discover a negotiated settlement to the dispute over pay, jobs and security”.
Andrew Haines, Community Rail’s chief govt, mentioned: “The RMT has jumped the gun right here as everybody loses if there’s a strike.
“As a public physique we’ve got been engaged on providing a pay enhance that taxpayers can afford, and we proceed to debate this with our trades unions.
“We urge the RMT to take a seat down with us and proceed to speak, not stroll, in order that we are able to discover a compromise and keep away from damaging industrial motion.
“We’re at a key level within the railway’s restoration from the pandemic. The taxpayer has offered the business with £16bn price of extra life help during the last two years and that can’t proceed. Journey habits have modified perpetually and the railway has to vary as properly to adapt to this new actuality.
“Any industrial motion now could be disastrous for our business’s restoration and would vastly influence very important provide and freight chains. It will additionally serve to undermine our collective capacity to afford the pay will increase we need to make.”
Steve Montgomery, group chair of the Rail Supply Group, representing prepare operators, mentioned: “Our railways should adapt to draw extra passengers again and scale back our operating prices. It isn’t truthful to ask taxpayers to proceed to shoulder the burden when there are different very important companies that want public help.
“No person wins when industrial motion threatens to disrupt the lives and livelihoods of passengers and companies and places the business’s restoration in danger. We urge the RMT management to behave responsibly, and to speak to us to discover a strategy to keep away from damaging industrial motion and safe the long-term way forward for the business.”
“Each enterprise desires to help its employees and the railway isn’t any exception. All prepare operators need to provide their employees a pay rise and are working onerous to make that occur. However, as an business, we’ve got to vary our methods of working and enhance productiveness to assist pay our personal means.
“The alternate options of asking taxpayers to shoulder the burden after authorities has contributed over £16bn to the business throughout Covid, or asking passengers to pay even larger fares once they too are feeling the pinch, merely isn’t truthful.”
Transport for Wales and ScotRail weren’t concerned within the RMT poll – however ScotRail is presently cancelling 700 trains per day because of a dispute involving the prepare drivers’ union, Aslef.
The white-collar rail union, TSSA, is threatening what its normal secretary referred to as “a summer time of discontent”. Members are being consulted forward of a doable strike poll if pay fails to maintain tempo with inflation – which hit 9 per cent final week.
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