April 14th - Is the end in sight for rail strikes?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Could the long and bitter dispute that has caused chaos since last June finally be approaching an end game?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder and I'm talking to you for a third day running about railways or in a railway frame of mind anyway. |
| 0:16.3 | But I'm glad to be not at London Waterloo Station where yesterday afternoon the problems were all fixed involving the signalling failure which wiped out the entire morning rush hour more or less. |
| 0:33.8 | And just to let you know the cost of that, I reckon about a million pounds in absolute direct costs |
| 0:40.1 | in terms of lost revenue for the railway, |
| 0:42.7 | people who didn't make trips, |
| 0:44.3 | people who claimed refunds and so on |
| 0:46.0 | and then more millions than that, |
| 0:48.5 | everything from a dentist in London, |
| 0:50.9 | SE1 who had to cancel all her appointments |
| 0:53.1 | because she couldn't get to work, to the restaurants, the bars, which were looking forward to a pretty busy Thursday evening, as they always do, because that's become the new Friday, as it were. |
| 1:08.3 | But I woke up Friday morning to discover some actual possible good news at 23 minutes past 8. |
| 1:18.0 | And I was awake by then, I promise. I got a message from the RMT union saying we've received an updated offer from the rail delivery group and our national |
| 1:30.7 | executive committee is considering its contents no decision on any steps have been taken now |
| 1:37.0 | it's all gone a bit quiet in rail strike land which um i like but it is still the case that nobody since last summer has been |
| 1:47.9 | able to plan with complete confidence a trip with more than two weeks notice ahead without |
| 1:56.5 | running the risk that they will be subject to a strike because the unions have to give two weeks notice. |
| 2:03.8 | And while the RMT dispute with the network rail infrastructure provider is now over, |
| 2:12.0 | the pay offer and associated stuff was warmly welcomed by the vast majority of members. |
| 2:20.4 | We are still not in a position where the train operators, |
| 2:25.3 | these are the companies from southern to Avanti West Coast and LN-E-R, |
| 2:34.0 | which are actually contracted by the Department for Transport to run trains. |
| 2:39.6 | Actually, some of them, for instance, Northern and LNER are actually owned by the government. |
... |
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