July 5th - Are we about to see the rail strikes worsen?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Two weeks on from the first national rail strike, I'm at London Bridge station to assess the prospects of the summer ahead – with strike ballots under way at the train drivers' union, Aslef, and the white collar TSSA, my expectation is that a big strike involving all three could be called for late July. I hope I'm wrong.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Corder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling |
| 0:08.1 | whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or a bit fretful about what's happening this summer. |
| 0:13.7 | And I'm afraid I'm back in one of my usual haunts, London Bridge Station, the original terminus in the capital, to tell you what's happening |
| 0:23.7 | with strikes. And I'm doing this because it's two weeks since the RMT Union walked out in the |
| 0:31.0 | first of three alternate days of strike action, designed obviously to cause maximum disruption |
| 0:37.2 | and effectively wiping it |
| 0:39.2 | wiping out the best part of a week of travel for a lot of people. Now that threat hasn't |
| 0:49.5 | gone away. It meant that we had trains running on about half the network, but only maybe half of the normal frequency on those lines, and so therefore it was quite messy. |
| 1:03.0 | That hasn't gone away, and it may well be that further strikes will be called, but it might be that they are waiting for the other |
| 1:13.1 | unions to catch up so that we will see more widespread strikes and also the whole idea |
| 1:22.8 | of closing down the entire rail network, which is what Mick Lidge has said that he wants to do. |
| 1:30.3 | So let's start with the Transport Salaried Staff Association, which says that it has ballots notified for large number of train operators. |
| 1:43.3 | This is the white collar union. |
| 1:47.7 | And its action perhaps won't have too much of an effect on the way things are running, |
| 1:52.6 | but obviously it will all add up to a lot more mess. And they've got ballots out for |
| 1:58.5 | Avanti West Coast, cross-country, East Midlands Railways, West Midlands |
| 2:02.4 | trains, LNERN, Northern, C2C, southeastern, Great Western, Transpenine and Greater Anglia, |
| 2:09.1 | as well as Network Rail. And they are in dispute over pay, job security and terms and conditions. |
| 2:23.3 | Over at Aslef, the train driver's union, it's a little more fragmented because they negotiate with all the train operators. And actually, people |
| 2:29.2 | in railways say that privatisation has worked well for them because they've been able to take on each train |
| 2:36.2 | operation company on its own. And pay varies from around £45,000 on the Isle White to £77,000 |
| 2:46.4 | at Eurostar. And they believe that they haven't had in many cases pay rises since 2019. |
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