A number of claims have been made about rail workers pay ahead of planned industrial action. Members of the RMT Union are planning to strike on June 21, 23, and 25 over pay and redundancies.
The union represents over 40,000 staff from Network Rail and 13 different train firms. There was even a debate in the House of Commons about the upcoming strikes.
As discussions have rumbled on about rail workers' pay, various figures have been quoted when discussing how much they earn. So, what is their real pay pack?
How much are train drivers paid?
Transport secretary Grant Shapps responded to Jeremy Corbyn's claims drivers were underpaid by saying their median wage was £59,000. He said: "The median salary for a train driver is £59,000, compared with £31,000 for a nurse and £21,000 for a care worker."
Median, as an average figure, takes all of the workers, and selects the one in the middle as a representative example. And the BBC reports, Mr Shapps would be right, according to latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.
The median for train and tram drivers in 2021 was £59,189. Whereas nurses received £31,039.
The Transport Secretary was however a bit off with his figures for care workers. The median there is reportedly £16,502, with a senior care worker earning £20,105.
What is the median salary for rail workers?
One issue encountered when using the median salary for rail workers, the BBC says, is the fact drivers are represented by their own union, Aslef, which claims to cover 96% of drivers. A majority of the remaining 4% are not said to be unionised.
Aslef is not part of the national strike. Although they do have action of their own, with drivers at Greater Anglia striking on June 23 - a strike on Hull Trains has been cancelled.
Mr Shapps said: "The median salary for the rail sector is £44,000, which is significantly above the median salary in the country."
The BBC claims Mr Shapps' department has taken the median figures from the ONS categories for four types of worker. This includes rail travel assistants, such as ticket collectors, guards and information staff, who earn £33,310.
As well as rail construction and maintenance operatives who earn £34,998, transport operatives, such as signallers and assistants who earn £48,750, and the train drivers, earning £59,189. It has added those up and divided by four to get a mean.
This means his figure is not longer a median. Meaning the median could be higher or lower than the quoted £44,000.
That being said, the median for all UK employees last year was £25,971. Meaning rail workers are likely to be higher.
RMT claims of £33,000
The RMT says the figures are too high due to train and tram drivers being members of a different union. It also says it would not count workers like cleaners, who are not officially counted as rail workers.
The union says if you look at the £44,000 median and remove the drivers and include cleaning staff instead, it comes to a figure of £33,000. This it says better reflects the average pay of workers who will be striking.
The BBC did its own calculation and reflected the number of people in each of the groups used by the government, but excluded drivers. It says the approximate median was £37,500. It says it approach the RMT for figures on how it reached £33,000.
