On June 21^st (today), 23^rd and 25^th railway workers in the RMT Union will be taking industrial action.

Talks with Network Rail and the 15 Train Operating Companies have failed to reach agreement on pay and conditions in the face of inflation now running at over 10%.

“Strike action is not something anyone enters into lightly, no one wants to lose income, particularly in times like these.” Says Willenhall Lib Dem Transport Spokesperson Ian Shires.

The strike ballot amongst RMT members who, in the main, are the catering staff, maintenance workers, train guards and station staff, showed that 89% on a 71% turnout were in favour of taking this drastic step.

Rail workers pay has been frozen since 2020. The justification for this given by the train operators being the Coronavirus Pandemic, during which rail workers were applauded for keeping the country moving, helping to get other key workers to get to work often at great risk to themselves.

Having lost £thousands in pay as a result, and with things getting back to something like normal, railway workers want to see pay rises to match inflation in order just to keep a roof over their heads and pay the fuel bills. Not much to ask for when you see the top Directors in the industry taking home some £15 million last year.

Those affected by the strike, the travelling public, who rely on our railways to get them to and from their workplaces, will undoubtably have seen little of this in the media, much of which has stoked the fires of discontent and portrayed the RMT and the rail workers as very much the bad guys in all of this.

Regularly you see the popular press quoting pay in the industry in excess of £70,000 which may well be the case of some passenger train drivers in the London area. But it’s not the train drivers who have voted to strike. They belong to a different Union, ASLEF.

The Government could end this dispute by brokering a fair settlement, job security and no loss of earnings. However, the Government says the dispute has nothing to do with them. The fact is it has very much to do with them. It is they who have told Network Rail and the Train Operators to make around 10% cuts. The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has threatened to bring in laws to ensure “minimum service levels” which is government speak for effectively denying the right to strike.

The Government has further suggested that it wants to enable agency workers to break strikes – something which currently is clearly unlawful. If this practice were to see the light of day, all workers would lose critical rights and would be worse off, finding themselves unable to defend jobs, pay and conditions.

Instead of stoking the fires of division, the Government should sit down with the RMT to find an amicable settlement, after all wasn’t it they who, during the Pandemic, said it wanted to invest in building a high skill, high pay economy?

With everything else that is going on around Boris Johnson at the moment, PartyGate, the Northern Ireland Protocol and raging inflation, and possibly losing 2 Bye Elections this Thursday, the last thing he needs is this dispute escalating into a general strike.

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