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TRAIN drivers will walk out in another series of one-day strikes early next month, coupled with a six-day overtime ban, at the 16 passenger operators with whom the ASLEF union is still in dispute.
Members will strike at the 16 rail privateers on Thursday 9th May and will also refuse to work non-contractual overtime from Monday 6th to Saturday 11 May.
Announcing the strikes yesterday, the union pointed out that ‘while no one has to belong to a union, 96% of all the train drivers in Britain choose to belong to ASLEF’.
The union declared: ‘The dispute is to get train drivers, who have not had an increase in salary for five years since their last pay deals expired in 2019, the pay rise they deserve.
‘The cost of living has increased significantly in the last five years.
‘After members in February voted overwhelmingly – yet again – to take industrial action, (under the law we have to reballot members every six months) we asked the train operating companies to come to the table and talk. They refused.’
ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan said: ‘It is now a year since we sat in a room with the train companies – and a year since we rejected the risible offer they made and which they admitted, privately, was designed to be rejected.’
The union statement continued: ‘We first balloted for industrial action in June 2022, after three years without a pay rise.
‘It took eight one-day strikes to persuade the TOCs (train operating companies) to come to the table and talk.
‘Our negotiating team – GS Mick Whelan, AGS Simon Weller, and EC president Dave Calfe – met the RDG (rail delivery group), a lobby group that acts for some of the employers, under the framework of the Rail Industry Recovery Group, on eight occasions – the last being on Wednesday 26 April last year.
‘That was followed by the TOCs’ “land grab” for all our terms & conditions on Thursday 27 April – which was immediately rejected.’
Whelan continued: ‘Since then train drivers have voted, again and again, to take action to get a pay rise.
‘That’s why Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, is being disingenuous when he says that offer should have been put to members.
‘Drivers would not vote to strike if they thought an offer was acceptable. They don’t. And that offer – now a year old – is dead in the water.
‘Our pay deals at these companies ran out in 2019,’ said Whelan.
‘Train drivers at these TOCs have not had an increase in salary for five years. That is completely wrong.
‘The employers – and the government – think we are going to give up and run away. They’re wrong. In the words of Tom Petty, we won’t back down.’
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