December 14th - So what exactly is the Network Rail strike all about?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A listener asked me what exactly the train strikes that have been endured this week are about, a question that's not that simple to answer. But here I am trying to give a broad overview of the reasons for the strikes and what the next steps are.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the independent travel podcast for Wednesday the 14th of December. I'm Simon |
| 0:07.9 | Calder and thank you for joining me. Well, I've spent the day at various London railway stations, |
| 0:13.4 | day two of the latest round of national strikes by members of the RMT Union. They've walked out at |
| 0:20.4 | network rail and at 14 train operators. |
| 0:24.4 | As a result, well, the very last trains are going to be leaving here very shortly. |
| 0:29.0 | People sprinting for various platforms here and there have been warnings over the past half hour or so |
| 0:34.8 | about last trains disappearing. There's a few stragglers just turning up trains. |
| 0:41.2 | There's one coming in from Plymouth, just a little bit late there. |
| 0:45.4 | Getting in at quarter seven, I hope that that will make it. |
| 0:49.0 | Bear in mind that if you're hoping to travel on Thursday, |
| 0:52.3 | well, the rail network will start up again, |
| 0:54.6 | but it won't be doing very much before about half past seven in the morning. |
| 0:59.7 | So, Craig, after my item yesterday about Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT Union, |
| 1:06.3 | says, can you explain what the dispute's about? |
| 1:08.7 | And I thought, well, hang on, I've only got six or seven minutes. |
| 1:11.4 | So no. |
| 1:12.3 | But I can actually tell you a little bit more about one of the disputes |
| 1:17.7 | because it's far more complex than just having some strikers who work for the railway |
| 1:21.9 | and some employers. |
| 1:24.5 | It used to be the case that, yes, you'd have the National Union of Railway |
| 1:28.8 | men as they used to be known up against British Rail, but now it's more complicated. |
| 1:34.5 | But let me deal entirely with Network Rail. Network rail are the people who run the infrastructure. |
... |
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