November 24th - RMT boss talks with new transport secretary
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As train firms warn rail passengers to “only travel by train if necessary” on Saturday 26 November, ahead of the next strike, the leader of the rail union has begun talks with the new transport secretary.
I'm outside the Department for Transport to ask Mick Lynch how planned industrial action will hit passengers around Christmas.
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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 coming to you from |
| 0:09.2 | London SW1 in particular horse ferry road and that is because I am outside the department for transport |
| 0:20.5 | yes there is a meeting going on as I speak |
| 0:25.6 | between the General Secretary of the RMT Union, Mick Lynch, |
| 0:29.6 | and the new Transport Secretary, |
| 0:31.6 | the third one in three months, Mark Harper. |
| 0:34.6 | And the technique that the RMT union is using now is to have a pavement press conference. |
| 0:45.7 | This is an interesting device which we haven't really seen since the 1980s and it effectively |
| 0:53.9 | means that there's a scrum probably about 20 |
| 0:57.0 | reporters, camera people, photographers outside the Department of Transport waiting for something to happen. |
| 1:06.0 | And what that something is is Mick Lynch coming out and telling us what has happened in the meeting. He's very |
| 1:11.8 | happy to do that because on Monday I was at a similar meeting this one outside the RMT |
| 1:17.8 | headquarters in London, Houston and he said that he told talking extraordinary length about the way that |
| 1:27.3 | the Department of Transport he said had stopped a deal being done between the rail union and 14 train operators plus network rail and just to remind you that there are many strikes coming down the track. Saturday we've got a strike |
| 1:45.8 | by drivers for Aslef representing 11 train operators or rather working for them or rather not |
| 1:55.0 | working for them at all. They will be taking time out on Saturday. |
| 2:01.6 | This is going to cause a lot of trouble on the key long distance operators. |
| 2:07.7 | Those are, for example, the LNER on the East Coast main line, |
| 2:12.6 | Avanti West Coast on the West Coast main line. |
| 2:15.5 | On top of that, you've got the cross-country, |
| 2:19.3 | South Eastern, East Midlands Railway, many others all deciding that they are not going to be |
| 2:26.3 | running the usual trains. Many of them saying they won't have any trains at all and |
... |
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