Rail strikes threatened. The RMT union are very busy at the moment with threatened strikes about whether signalmen work 3 days or 4 days and about re-structuring of maintenance staff resulting in 1500 redundancies out of 18,000 staff. In Scotland they’ve been on strike about who opens train doors. In all these cases the staff and union are claiming safety issues about the changes.
It appears the signalmen are looking for a lesser action than a strike although that usually results in a more prolonged dispute, they’ve already been talking about these changes for 3 years so there’s no hurry for them. While the maintenance men seem enthusiastic about taking redundancy, leaving the safety issue as a lone factor. Another curious thing is that the strikes are being spoken of as being at Easter but the leader of the RMT, Bob Crowe, said the railway is usually shut for maintenance at Easter and buses are used. Bit of a surprise. So he’s saying passengers aren’t inconvenienced at Easter. Although the maintenance will still need to be done and if safety is their worry and they’re not maintaining the track it seems a bit of a double standard.
Ever increasing regulation and improvements to standards will result in costs that we can no longer afford. Efficiencies must also be found. From what I can gather no-one has been threatened with compulsory redundancy on the railway and surely the managers and regulator have safety at the top of their agenda. So should they be on strike. Is there more to this dispute? No doubt, but what agenda; is it politics, opportunist power with the government vulnerable at this point in time.
Meanwhile, like at British Airways, will you be planning a trip using the railway if there is another way? Many will, but I wouldn’t. Then again with the pot-holed roads the car has square wheels and loose suspension, not looking forward to its MOT. Perhaps best to not go so far this Easter.