Contingency plans are being drawn up to try to keep passenger and freight trains running
(Picture: PA Wire)The Government is determined to “face down” the Tube union threatening to bring chaos to the Tube and mainline railways, a transport minister said on Wednesday.
Baroness Vere called on the RMT to get back round the negotiating table and said the walkouts it plans during and immediately after the Queen’s platinum jubilee bank holiday weekend were “enormously disrespectful”.
But union chiefs say they are fighting to protect the wages and benefits of their members. On Tuesday night the RMT announced that 89 per cent of members who voted were in favour of a strike on the national railways. Dates are yet to be announced but action is likely from mid-June.
This is in addition to a walkout of about 80 station staff at Euston and Green Park stations on Friday June 3 and a 24-hour network-wide action on the Tube on Monday June 6, which may force the majority of Underground stations, including all those in central London, to close.
Baroness Vere told the Standard: “I think the RMT needs to have a long hard look at itself.
“The reality is that the Government has helped all rail workers throughout the country throughout the pandemic with billions and billions and billions of pounds of funding.
“We cannot have a situation where we go back to exactly how life was before the pandemic, because life is not the same. They must come to the table and talk rationally and sensibly about the sorts of reforms that we need to see.
“Every single business across the country has had to make some sort of changes because of the pandemic. The RMT needs to understand that and stop these entirely unnecessary and unhelpful strikes, particularly on the weekend of Her Majesty’s jubilee. I find that enormously disrespectful and I absolutely think they should call that off.”
Latest figures today showed that weekday passenger numbers on the national railways have recovered to 82 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. On the Tube, they rose to 74 per cent of “normal” last Thursday.
Baroness Vere added: “At TfL, we have got to make sure that the pensions being offered to the people who join now match what is available to the wider economy. Otherwise it’s simply not fair. Why should me or you be paying for gold-plated pensions that normal people couldn’t dream of getting?
“We will face this down because we absolutely need to get a rail system that is fit for the future.”
RMT members at Network Rail and 15 train operators have backed industrial action, which could result in only one in five trains running.
However, RMT members at GTR, the country’s biggest franchise, which runs Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express trains, only backed action short of a strike.
The union says Network Rail intends to cut at least 2,500 maintenance jobs as part of a £2 billion reduction in spending on the network, while staff at train companies have been subject to pay freezes, threats to jobs and attacks on their terms and conditions.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “Members want a decent pay rise, job security and no compulsory redundancies.”
TfL hopes to keep both Green Park and Euston open next Friday and trains will continue to run.
The June 6 walkout will not include drivers but TfL fears that it may only be able to run shuttle services in the suburbs between stations on above-ground parts of the Tube network.
