Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast Thursday the 15th of December.

I'm Simon Calder and I've just written story 1,943 on the current miserable rail dispute.

Just to bring you up to date, services began late this morning. For instance, getting to the airports,

you'd be lucky to get there before 8am today if you were traveling to Manchester, Birmingham or one of

the London airports by train. Lots of people obviously couldn't get to where they needed to be.

And cancellations have really begun

that we've got lots of late evening trains curtailed

and I think the first cancellation traditionally

is the 530 from Sunderland to Kings Cross

on Grand Central

but there has been a development this afternoon and I just wanted to tell you about it.

So this is the Transport Salaried Staffs Association. They are white collar workers and they tend to be,

I guess, more moderate than other workers in the rail industry.

The RMT is certainly one of the, I would say, most militant.

That's not a prejudicial term.

They do great things to their workers in the whole trade union movement.

Anyway, the TSS have welcomed what they say is a great deal offered by Network Rail. It basically gives people a 5% increase this year, 4% next year,

significantly higher amounts if you're on the lowest salaries, that could be typically

11%. And that's helping the low pay. And the union says it's also secured, quote, job security

and the nailing down of our terms and conditions. So on a turnout of 70%, 85% voted in favour to accept it.

That means just under 60% were in favour. And members of the Unite Union have accepted the same deal.

Now, according to Andrew Haynes, who is the chief executive of Network Rail, that makes

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