If it’s not bad enough for travellers at the moment with the planed strikes at BA at the end of the month now crucial talks are taking place to try and halt the threat of strikes over the Easter break by thousands of railway workers. Officials from the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union will meet executives at Network Rail (NR), which is seeking to cut jobs and change working practices to allow more maintenance work to be carried out at weekends.
The protests are seeking to stop NR cutting 1,500 jobs although NR have said that 1,100 workers have already volunteered for redundancy and said the “vast majority” of the 1,500 cuts will be achieved without the need for compulsory lay-offs. A NR spokesman said “We need fewer people and those who remain will need to work differently,”
The RMT have growing support from MP’s with 150 of them already signing an Early Day Motion opposing the planned cuts and calling on the Government to intervene. Bob Crow RMT General Secretary said “We head in to talks with Network Rail with the very clear intention of seeking an agreement which ends the threat of compulsory redundancies amongst safety-critical maintenance staff and which puts the safety and security of our railways above the drive to slash budgets to hit arbitrary savings targets. We have secured a huge pool of public and political support for RMT’s ‘rail cuts cost lives’ campaign, alongside an overwhelming mandate from our members for action if that’s what it takes to reverse these cuts. That puts us in a strong position as we open up these direct talks with the senior management at Network Rail.”
