Plans for second rail strike

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union on Southern Railway have walked out, causing fresh travel misery for passengers already suffering delays.

Almost a third of all ScotRail services were cancelled, with many more delayed, by a 24-hour walkout by conductors in a dispute over driver-only trains, which rail chiefs said was “needless”.

The RMT says that this will reduce safety standards.

But these attacks will keep coming unless we put control of the railways back into public hands and rebuild a safe, well-run, well-staffed service that is available and affordable to all.

“If scheduled strikes go ahead, passengers should prepare for significant disruption on the railways on Tuesday”.

“The RMT are being, at best, disingenuous when they tell people that we are trying to have driver-only trains”. “We will still schedule a second person on board these incredible new modern trains when they arrive and we have guaranteed to the RMT that there will be no impact on Conductor jobs, pay or terms and conditions”.

ScotRail has been accused of drawing up a secret strategy to “smash” unions and “smuggle” in driver-only trains, the issue at the centre of the current dispute.

“The union has made repeated attempts to get talks moving and it makes no sense at all for the company to continue to blank us unless they are hell-bent on bulldozing through cuts to jobs and safety”.

BBC South’s transport correspondent, Paul Clifton, said Govia Thameslink – which operates Southern – carried 620,000 passengers a day, adding: “This dispute is messing up countless lives now, not just on strike days”.

Between 6am and 9am, 90% of Southern services into London Bridge arrived on time, and 87.5% of services into London Victoria were on time, said the company.

Southern has been cancelling trains for weeks, blaming high levels of staff sickness and an unwillingness to do overtime.

Some passengers reported improvements to their usual journeys, including posting photos of empty train carriages. However, our members are concerned with the safety of our passengers and that’s a testament to them.

“I hope the strike works in their favour”.

Axing guards from trains is a deeply cynical decision that sacrifices passengers’ safety for privateers’ profit and workers do us all a great service when they take action against it.