Some 40,000 RMT union members at Network Rail and 14 train companies are walking out over pay, jobs and terms. The Department for Transport said the RMT was “hell-bent on creating further misery for passengers across the UK”. But the RMT accused Transport Secretary Grant Shapps of not allowing the rail industry to do a deal with the union. Andrew Haines, Network Rail chief executive, said despite its best efforts to find a breakthrough there would be more rail disruption due to strikes.
So, what is going on here? It appears that there is a stalemate between Grant Shapps wanting the Unions to agree to the removal of archaic railway practices before pay increases are agreed upon.
In a speech last month Grant Shapps talked about how, under state control, the railway shrunk by half. However, after privatisation in the 1990s, despite passenger miles doubling, the industry had become more fragmented, complex and unaccountable. And how these problems culminated in the disastrous timetable introduction of May 2018. The signs were there for all to see. Spiralling costs and delays to upgrades, collapsing franchises, poor customer service and late, overcrowded trains. The industry’s future was rooted in tired and outdated notions of ownership. Not only was the railway stuck in the past, the conversation about how to fix it was too.
Creating a new body, Great British Railways, to put passengers and punctuality first, by bringing disparate parts of the industry together, using common-sense reforms to untangle the complexities and build a modern, resilient railway in tune with a changing market.
The Reforms Grant Shapps wants to See
• Sunday working not to be voluntary – an agreement that goes back to 1919.
• Reduce the number of ticket offices across the network as only 1 in 8 tickets are sold over the counter.
• Increase shifts when needed & over the weekend.
• Pay needs to be in step with the wider public sector & the median wage for rail workers is £44,000 but nurses only earn around £34,000. A big sticky area between Shapps and the RMT.
• Reducing the number of senior managers and their pay.
• Maintenance practices need modernising and to make better use of technology. COVID has only made the case for reform more urgent.
• The broken franchising system to be replaced with a new Passenger Service Contracts
• Replacing Victorian signalling with digital systems which means we can fit more trains on the line.
• To fit tracking sensors on trains. Each sensor takes 70,000 pictures a minute, finding tiny flaws in the track that no human eye can see. Instead of paying men to walk the track which is dangerous. But the unions still want this job to be done today as it was done in the steam age, by sending people out to walk along the track, looking at the rails. That is not only less likely to pick up faults before they become dangerous, but it’s also more dangerous for staff. And sadly, there have been a number of fatalities on the line in recent years. We must modernise.
• That is why, if this dispute cannot be resolved, the government will look at a full range of options to stop the unions hurting the general public, including repealing the ban on transferable staff filling in for striking workers.
Image Credit BBC