January 17th - Avanti disruption despite strike cancellation: Sunday services in chaos
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Simon Calder discusses the impact of Avanti West Coast's cancelled strike on Sunday, January 19th, which leaves most trains between Manchester and London running on a reduced schedule. Learn why reinstating services isn’t as simple as it seems and the ongoing challenges facing UK rail travel.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel pod 15th of January and I am customarily at a railway station. |
| 0:14.0 | This one is Manchester Piccadilly, one of the busiest stations outside London. on Sunday the 19th of January it will be much quieter |
| 0:27.2 | than normal that's because well I'm looking down here at platforms five and six normally |
| 0:34.6 | there are shuttling Avanti West Coast trains every 20 minutes one is |
| 0:40.8 | arriving and one is departing for London. Well, on Sunday that's going to be down to |
| 0:46.5 | one an hour or one just drawing in on Platform 6 there and those will only be during very limited hours. So for example, if you want |
| 0:59.5 | to travel from here at Manchester to London on a direct train on Sunday, the first one is at 20 |
| 1:06.5 | past nine, a little bit late for people who need to make an early start, and the very last one is |
| 1:12.6 | at 5 to 4, very early for people who are perhaps wanting to return after the weekend. And what's |
| 1:20.2 | causing this? Well, it is not a strike. What we're seeing is the people who were planning to be on strike, that's train |
| 1:32.5 | managers working for Avanti West Coast, called off their strike on Thursday. They are striking |
| 1:42.3 | pretty much every Sunday between now and June, and they're doing that |
| 1:47.0 | in a big old row about payments for working on rest days. Basically, they've been offered |
| 1:54.0 | between 250 and 300 pounds for working on a day off, depending on whether it's the weekend or not. |
| 2:03.6 | And they say, no, we want more than that. They say management train drivers who are actually |
| 2:09.6 | office workers who are trained up to workers train managers when they have to, such as on strike days. |
| 2:16.6 | These management train managers get £500 a day. |
| 2:19.9 | I'm not sure about that figure, but I do know for a fact that the men and women driving |
| 2:25.0 | the trains working on a day off will get £600. |
| 2:29.4 | So I'm not surprised that the RMT is not saying, look, come on, we've got to be worth more than |
| 2:35.9 | half of what a driver's worth, but they are singling out the management train drivers. |
| 2:41.3 | Anyway, very long and bitter dispute that ultimately will end up with the taxpayer funding, |
... |
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