Closing summary
Our main story today: UK rail passengers have faced another day of disruption, with the union leader Mick Lynch warning the dispute could go on “indefinitely” unless ministers intervene in talks.
Only 20% of train services were running on Thursday due to strike action across Great Britain that involved more than 45,000 rail workers, who are members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) and TSSA unions.
Turkey’s central bank has delivered a surprise interest rate cut to revive economic growth and sustain employment despite sky-high inflation.
The bank slashed its key rate to 13% from 14%, even though inflation rose to nearly 80% in July.
Our other stories:
Thank you for reading. Please join us again tomorrow. Take care – JK
Updated
The energy industry has united behind a plan to set up a crisis fund that could prevent bills from soaring next year and provide a lifeline for households struggling with the cost of living.
Energy UK, the trade body for the sector, has written to the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, to back calls for a “deficit tariff scheme” to be established as a long-term solution to the energy crisis.
Under the plan, commercial banks would put cash into the state-backed fund, which suppliers could then draw on to freeze customers’ bills at the current price cap, £1,971, for two years.
The cost of the scheme would then be paid back over 10 to 15 years through a surcharge on bills or via taxation. However, the scheme could create a debt pile of up to £50bn, far greater than alternatives including Labour leader Keir Starmer’s £29bn plan to freeze the price cap.
The company that owns the rights to JRR Tolkien’s works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has been bought by the Swedish gaming firm Embracer Group, which has hinted it could make spin-off films based on popular characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn and Gollum.
Embracer has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the holding company that controls the intellectual property rights to films, video games, board games, merchandise, theme parks and stage productions relating to Tolkien’s two most famous literary franchises.
The deal also includes “matching rights” in other Middle-earth-related literary works authorised by the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins – primarily The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth – which were published after Tolkien’s death in 1973.
US stocks on Wall Street were mostly flat, as investors assessed data showing a decline in weekly jobless claims. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both dipped 0.2% while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.3%.
Initial jobless claims fell by 2,000 to 250,000 in the week ended 13 August, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast new claims to total 260,000.
Jobless claims edge lower as Fed looks to cool labor market https://t.co/ALmBtkzHVZ
— CNBC (@CNBC) August 18, 2022
Here’s our full story on the rail strikes:
Rail passengers have faced another day of disruption, with the union leader Mick Lynch warning the dispute could go on “indefinitely” unless ministers intervene in talks.
Only 20% of train services were running on Thursday due to strike action across Great Britain that involved more than 45,000 rail workers, who are members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) and TSSA unions.
Commuters were told to only try to travel if absolutely necessary, with further disruption planned on Friday and the weekend. In London, bus drivers and London Underground workers plan to strike in the coming days.
All in a month’s work: A 20-year-old US university student has made a $110m (£91m) profit with a one-month bet on the meme stock Bed Bath & Beyond.
Jake Freeman and his family bought almost 5m shares in the struggling US homeware retailer at less than $5.50 a share in July for a total outlay of about $25m.
After an almost 500% increase in the shares, sparked by intense chatter about the stock on Reddit message boards, including several posts by Freeman, he sold them for more than $130m – crystallising the vast profit.
They rose as high as $28 on Tuesday, when Freeman is understood to have sold most of his stake. The Bed Bath & Beyond shares, which trade on the ticker BBBY, dropped to $23 on Wednesday, and were down a further 14% in pre-market trading on Thursday to $19.70.
Meme stocks are those that soar independently of the success of a business, thanks to hype on message boards and social media. They rose to prominence early last year when shares in ailing companies such as the US retail firm GameStop soared, partly driven by a campaign to punish hedge funds betting that their value would fall.
The UK has blocked the takeover of an electronic design company by a Hong Kong rival over national security concerns, in the latest sign of growing British anxiety about Chinese investment.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, took the decision to prevent Super Orange HK from acquiring Bristol-based Pulsic, saying it was “necessary and proportionate to mitigate the risk to national security”.
It comes under the new National Security and Investment Act, which was introduced at the start of the year.
The government’s move is its latest attempt to curtail Chinese ownership of significant British companies, in particular technology firms or those with strategic importance.
Back to our rail theme. One of the UK’s worst performing train operators has launched an investigation after passengers had to climb over a 7ft (2.1 metre) spiked fence to leave a station when staff locked up early.
The Avanti West Coast train from London was 100 minutes late arriving into Oxenholme on Tuesday night, by which time staff had locked the station and left for the night, passengers said. Some resorted to climbing the fence in scenes described by the local MP, Tim Farron, as “an unacceptable farce”.
Avanti told the MP it took the incident “very seriously” and promised to investigate.
On a lighter note, Rishi Sunak’s habit of slightly awkward interactions with the everyday world has continued after he talked of enjoying McDonald’s breakfast wraps – an item that disappeared from the fast food chain’s UK menu nearly two-and-a-half years ago.
The former chancellor was speaking to ITV’s This Morning programme a day after he was photographed at a branch of McDonald’s, where again he appeared to struggle slightly to make a contactless card payment.
Asked by hosts Rochelle Hughes and Andi Peters what he had eaten, Sunak explained that it had been about 7.30am, and so he ate a bacon roll with ketchup and pancakes.
“If I’m with my daughters then we get the wrap,” the Conservative leadership hopeful continued. “My eldest daughter – if I’m with her, it’s the wrap with hash browns and everything in it. It’s what we do.”
However, a McDonald’s spokesman confirmed that the chain had stopped selling breakfast wraps in March 2020, a move made permanent with an announcement in January this year.
Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan is losing confidence in Sahap Kavcioglu, his latest appointment as central bank governor, and the two have spoken little in recent weeks, Reuters reported, citing three unnamed people.
Erdogan sacked Kavcioglu’s predecessor less than seven months ago, and also fired two others in the last 2 1/2 years.
The rapid turnover has hurt the central bank’s credibility, and has left inflation rocketing and the lira weak. Here is a history of the last four central bank governors, courtesy of Reuters:
Murat Cetinkaya’s early months as governor in 2016 were the last time when Turkey’s inflation rate was within an official target range around 5%. Throughout 2018 he faced rising price pressures and lira depreciation that culminated in a full-blown currency crisis, which was driven by a diplomatic dispute over the release of a US pastor, the threat of US sanctions and emerging worries over Erdogan’s influence over monetary policy.
Analysts said Cetinkaya was too slow to head off the crisis. By the time he raised the key policy interest rate to 24% in September of 2018, the economy was falling into a deep downturn that would bring an end to years of the strong economic growth that had come to define Erdogan’s leadership since 2003. However, He held policy steady and brought about a sharp fall in annual inflation through most of 2019.
Weeks after becoming governor, Murat Uysal - who had been Cetinkaya’s deputy - began an aggressive easing cycle that brought the policy rate as low as 8.25% in 2020, from 24%. The cuts, combined with a boom in state-bank lending, helped ease financial stresses as the coronavirus pandemic hit. But with inflation rebounding, Uysal reversed course and began tightening again in his last few months at the central bank.
A former finance minister and long-time member of Erdogan’s AK Party, Naci Agbal took the reins on an explosive weekend in Turkish politics. A day after the appointment, Albayrak, Erdogan’s son-in-law, announced his resignation as finance minister with a message on Instagram. Reuters later reported that Agbal had met with Erdogan days earlier to warn that the Albayrak-Uysal policy of currency interventions left the central bank’s reserves vulnerable.
Agbal quickly emerged as a respected inflation hawk and his short stint was dominated by aggressive rate hikes that picked up where Uysal left off. The lira rallied in response and some foreign investors edged back into Turkish assets after years of fleeing. Days before he too was fired early on a Saturday, Agbal raised rates one last time to 19%.
An ex-banker, Sahap Kavcioglu’s arrival at the bank was met with a sharp market sell-off in which the lira briefly lost 15% of its value before recovering some losses. His previous columns in a pro-government newspaper showed he shared Erdogan’s unorthodox view that high rates cause inflation, so investors prepared for prompt cuts. Yet as inflation continued to rise and the currency floundered, Kavcioglu held rates steady through the summer.
But with Erdogan publicly promising lower rates and inflation, Kavcioglu pivoted in September. He began giving dovish signals and urged investors to focus on a lower, core inflation measure, paving the way to a surprise 100 basis-point rate cut later that month that sent the lira to new all-time lows.
Partners at the accounting firm PwC UK have been handed more than £1m each for the first time, after a double-digit rise in revenues across the business.
The firm said on Thursday it had increased average payouts for its 995 top-level employees to £920,000 for the 12 months to June, up 12% from a year earlier, after a jump in profits linked in part to higher income from its consulting services.
Partners received another £105,000 each, on average, after sharing in proceeds linked to the disposal of its mobility and immigration business, which helped multinational businesses manage business travel, immigration issues, tax and salaries.
Turkey's central bank delivers surprise rate cut, Norges Bank hikes rates
Turkey’s central bank has delivered a surprise interest rate cut to revive economic growth and sustain employment despite sky-high inflation.
The bank slashed its key rate to 13% from 14%, even though inflation rose to nearly 80% in July. Its monetary policy committee said in a statement:
It is important that financial conditions remain supportive to preserve the growth momentum in industrial production and the positive trend in employment in a period of increasing uncertainties regarding global growth, as well as escalating geopolitical risk.
Accordingly, the committee has decided to reduce the policy rate by 100 basis points, and has assessed that the updated level of policy rate is adequate under the current outlook.
It added that “the recent increase in spread between policy rate and the loan interest rate is considered to reduce the effectiveness of monetary transmission”.
Turkey’s rate cut contrasts with the hikes delivered by other central banks.
Norges Bank, Norway’s central bank, raised its main rate to 1.75% from 1.2% today and flagged a further hike in September. Inflation in the Nordic country hit 4.5% in July, up from 3.6% in June and well ahead of expectations.
Governor Ida Wolden Bache said:
A markedly higher policy rate is needed to ease the pressures in the Norwegian economy and to bring inflation down towards the target.
The rate-setting committee noted that there is a risk that “little spare capacity in the Norwegian economy and persistent global price pressures will lead to a further acceleration in price inflation”.
But the committee also acknowledged the risk of a sharper slowdown in global growth.
Updated
Elsewhere, eurozone inflation was confirmed at an annual rate of 8.9% in July, unchanged from the flash estimate, and up from 8.6% in June.
Katharina Koenz, senior economist at Oxford Economics, said:
The rise reflected a larger increase in food prices and still-very high energy inflation. Inflationary pressures continue to broaden as services prices also rose markedly, bringing core inflation to 4%.
With inflation not showing any signs of cooling off in the short term we expect another 50bps rate hike in September from the European Central Bank despite the weakening growth outlook.
Rail strikes: summary
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch has warned that the rail dispute could go on“indefinitely,” as the latest strike by thousands of workers caused travel misery for passengers.
He called on the government to end its refusal to get involved in talks over pay, jobs and conditions, as he joined a picket line outside Euston station in London. Only around one in five trains are running across the country because of the walkout by members of the RMT and TSSA unions, on the first day of a fresh round of strikes.
He also warned that Britain could be brought by a standstill by a wave of strikes hitting “every sector of the economy,” but stopped short of predicting a general strike.
Lynch said he fears finding a solution will not be possible because of “political interference” from the Department for Transport and the Treasury.
Andrew Haines, chief executive of Network Rail, said he does not believe workers are “clear on what they’re striking for” and argued that the problem is not with the government but the RMT union. He added that he wanted to put the pay offer to RMT members directly in a referendum.
But Lynch said RMT members were “completely committed to the cause” and would “keep going” in their long-running dispute over pay, jobs and working conditions “until a negotiated settlement is reached”.
Strikes by bus workers across Cheshire, Lancashire, Manchester and Merseyside will be suspended while GMB members vote on a new pay offer, the union and Arriva North West said on Wednesday.
Today, members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union at Network Rail (NR), workers from 14 train operators, Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) union members at seven companies and Unite members at NR will strike. This will have a knock-on effect on rail services on Friday morning.
Also on Friday, members of the RMT and Unite working on the tube will strike, as well as Unite members on London United bus routes in the capital in a separate dispute over pay.
On Saturday rail workers will strike again, along with London United bus drivers, which will also affect Sunday morning train services.
Updated
Also last night, we learned that a director at energy regulator Ofgem resigned, accusing it of favouring businesses over consumers with a rule change that will add as much as £400 to the average UK household energy bill.
Christine Farnish, a non-executive member of the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (Gema), Ofgem’s board, tendered her resignation to the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, in early August.
Farnish said the regulator “gave too much benefit to companies at the expense of consumers”, according to a leaked internal Ofgem announcement. Across the UK’s 27m retail energy customers a £400 annual bills increase could cost households more than £10bn.
Last night, it emerged that the billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, one of Britain’s richest people, is interested in buying Manchester United from the club’s beleaguered owners, the Glazer family.
Ratcliffe, who is from Greater Manchester, had previously wanted to purchase Chelsea from Roman Abramovich but has now turned his attention to United.
Two-thirds of all UK households will be trapped in fuel poverty by January with planned government support leaving even middle-income households struggling to pay their bills, according to research.
It shows 18 million families, the equivalent of 45 million people, will be left trying to make ends meet after further predicted rises in the energy price cap in October and January.
An estimated 86.4% of pensioner couples are expected to fall into fuel poverty, traditionally defined as when energy costs exceed 10% of a household’s net income, and 90.4% of lone parents with two or more children.
We are getting closer to a cashless society, as more than 23 million people in the UK used virtually no cash last year. Notes and coins will account for just 6% of payments within a decade, a report predicts.
The findings, from the banking body UK Finance, are likely to prompt concern that millions of people could be left behind as the shift to a cashless society accelerates.
And Transport for London plans to build 20,000 new homes over the next decade – I interviewed its commercial property director Graeme Craig.
Craig is poring over plans for one of London’s biggest new housing developments. The models show a mix of low and high rise buildings, 4,500 homes, alongside cultural venues and parks, which will rise from the rubble of the now demolished Earls Court exhibition centre.
Craig runs Transport for London’s property arm – he was appointed its first commercial director more than a decade ago. TfL’s day job is running the capital’s bus and underground network, but it has held on to its land, and 22 years after its creation it remains the third biggest landowner in the capital, after the emirate of Qatar and the mayor of London. It could soon be one of its biggest housing developers too.
In other news, Liz Truss would scrap reforms meant to avoid another 2007-style financial crisis by merging three of the UK’s top financial regulators if she becomes the UK’s next prime minister, according to reports.
The frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race is said to be preparing for a review of the financial regulators’ responsibilities if she succeeds in beating rival Rishi Sunak, the Financial Times said, citing campaign insiders.
That could mean merging the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which is broadly in charge of overseeing company behaviour and protecting consumers’ financial interests, with the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which is part of the Bank of England and responsible for making sure banks and insurers are financially stable and are not putting the wider economy at risk.
The report suggests the merger would also include the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), which oversees the networks that facilitate money transfers, contactless payments and cash machines across the UK.
Britain’s first double-digit inflation in more than four decades has cast doubts on the plausibility of the tax cuts being promised by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak during their leadership battle, one of the UK’s leading thinktanks has said.
Following news that the government’s preferred measure of the cost of living rose by 10.1% in the year to July, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said higher inflation would mean extra spending on welfare benefits, state pensions and on debt interest.
The result of inflation being five times higher than a year earlier would be weaker public finances, making it harder for either of the two hopefuls to replace Boris Johnson to make good on their tax pledges, the IFS said.
Lynch said he will put Sadiq Khan “under manners” as he accused the London mayor of sacrificing rail workers’ jobs and pension schemes.
Speaking at a picket line at Euston station, Lynch said:
Sadiq Khan’s got some massive problems because he’s been put under the cosh by a right-wing Government and by the people at the Treasury. They’re holding him to ransom.
Unfortunately, what Sadiq Khan is doing is offering our members’ pension schemes, and our members’ jobs and terms and conditions, as a sacrifice to the Treasury to get funding. He needs to get into a coalition with the workers and campaign against those cuts.
We’re determined to put him under manners as well as [transport secretary Grant] Shapps and the Treasury. We will take on anyone that tries to attack our people.
Speaking to Sky News, RMT chief Mick Lynch said his members were “completely committed to the cause” and would “keep going” in their long-running dispute over pay, jobs and working conditions until a negotiated settlement is reached.
Nobody can afford to go on strike. They don’t want to be on strike, they want a settlement.
They are completely tied into this dispute. I addressed a meeting of thousands of our members last night online and they are totally committed to the campaign that we have got.
They understood the issues when they voted for it and they are showing on the picket lines that they are completely committed to the cause.
We will keep going until we get a negotiated settlement and our members will decide whether it’s acceptable or not.
Rail strikes: RMT chief Mick Lynch says 'we will keep going until we get a negotiated settlement' https://t.co/vXsowsraf8
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 18, 2022
Network Rail chief wants to put pay offer to referendum of RMT members
Meanwhile, Andrew Haines, chief executive of Network Rail, said he does not believe workers are “clear on what they’re striking for” and argued that the problem is not with the government but the RMT union.
Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain just after RMT boss Mick Lynch, Haines said the situation is “absolutely is frustrating”.
We’ve been talking for over 18 months. We started these talks actually with Mick’s predecessor and so there’s no lack of readiness to talk. The issue is there are some fundamental disagreements.
Where I have a fundamental disagreement is that I don’t think colleagues are clear on what they’re striking for now,” he continued.
Mick mentioned pensions - that’s not an issue for Network Rail. He mentioned job security - we’ve given a guarantee of a job for every single person in Network Rail who wants a job affected by our proposals.
Now we’ve done our very best to meet those sort of issues but the common factor here is the RMT; it’s not the Government.
There are strikes on TfL, there are what, 13-14 train operators? Network Rail? All of those issues have been getting trapped together and I think many people striking are not clear.
That’s why we think the way to solve this is to put our offer, a very decent fair offer, to a referendum of RMT members. My staff, and I think that’s the way to solve this.
Lynch: UK could be brought to standstill by wave of strikes
Lynch warned that Britain could be brought by a standstill by a wave of strikes hitting “every sector of the economy”.
The RMT general secretary stopped short of predicting a general strike, saying:
It’s not in my power, it’s up to the TUC.
But he added:
What you are going to get is a wave of solidarity action, generalised strike action, synchronised action. And you’ll see it in every sector of the economy, in education, in health, wider parts of the transport system, in all sectors, the private sector as well.
People are fed up with the way they’ve been treated. The British worker is basically underpaid and gets no dignity or respect in the workplace.
We’ve got to change that so we get a square deal for everyone in Britain - and that’s what the unions are determined to do.
RMT chief warns rail dispute could go on 'indefinitely'
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch has warned that the rail dispute could go on“indefinitely,” as the latest strike by thousands of workers caused travel misery for passengers.
He called on the government to end its refusal to get involved in talks over pay, jobs and conditions, as he joined a picket line outside Euston station in London. Only around one in five trains are running across the country because of the walkout by members of the RMT and TSSA unions.
Lynch has written to the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, saying:
Your government has made the decision to use taxpayers’ money to bail out private train companies from being liable for revenue lost because of industrial action on the condition the same companies comply with government instructions to hold down pay, cut thousands of safety critical rail jobs, introduce driver only trains and close ticket offices across the network.
Lynch said the union had calculated that, including the previous and forthcoming industrial action, more than £120m of taxpayers’ money had been used to “bail out” private train companies to date. He told the PA news agency:
Using taxpayers’ money to satisfy the anti-union agenda of the Tory party and seek to break the trade unions is shameful and means the dispute will be prolonged indefinitely as the train companies don’t lose a penny as a result of the industrial action and therefore have no incentive to settle the disputes.
Instead of waging an ideological war against rail workers, millions of voters would rather that the Government allow for a fair negotiated settlement.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said:
Yet again, for the sixth time since June, union leaders are opting to inflict misery and disrupt the day-to-day lives of millions instead of working with industry to agree a deal that will bring our railways into the 21st century.
It’s clear strikes are not the powerful tool they once were and union chiefs are no longer able to bring the country to a standstill as, unlike them, the world has changed and people simply work from home.All these strikes are doing is hurting those people the unions claim to represent, many of whom will again be out of pocket and forced to miss a day’s work.
We urge union bosses to do the right thing by their members and let them have their say on Network Rail’s very fair deal, which will deliver the reforms our rail system urgently needs. It’s time to get off the picket lines and back around the negotiating table - the future of our railway depends on it.
Updated
Train passengers are suffering fresh misery today as rail workers strike again over pay and conditions.
— TalkTV (@TalkTV) August 18, 2022
Chris Page, chair of Rail Future: "People who get a good experience travelling by car today won't come back, which means fewer rail jobs."
JuliaHB1 | @Railfuture pic.twitter.com/7Ja8D5rn3W
The industrial action will cause four days of disruption to services, with one union warning it "will not back down" until its demands are met https://t.co/OsvW7QuKT2
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 18, 2022
Andy Lord, TfL’s chief operating officer, has apologised to customers for the disruption.
I would like to apologise to our customers for the strike action being carried out by RMT and Unite, which will have a significant impact on the city’s transport network. I understand how frustrating these strikes are and I’d like to remind the RMT and Unite that it’s not too late to work with us, Arriva Rail London and RATP to find a resolution and avoid the huge disruption this action will cause to people’s journeys and to the economy.
Customers should check before they travel from 18-21 August, as strike action is impacting different modes of transport each day. For 19 August, we are urging our customers to avoid travelling on the Tube and only travel if essential on the rest of the network. We expect little to no service on the Tube until 08:00 on Saturday 20 August and alternative travel modes are likely to be busy. Please consider walking and cycling if you need to travel.
Transport for London has reminded customers to “only travel if essential” ahead of tube, rail and bus strikes on Friday, and national rail strikes today and on Saturday.
Tube, rail and bus strikes will affect the majority of TfL’s network on Friday 19 August. Customers are advised to avoid travelling on the Tube and only travel on the rest of the TfL network if essential
Strike action by Unite is taking place on some London bus services in west and southwest London on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 August. Customers are encouraged to avoid making journeys on affected routes (more details on the TfL website)
The RMT is also striking on national rail services on Thursday 18 and Saturday 20 August, which will impact some London Underground, London Overground and Elizabeth line services. Customers using national rail services are advised to avoid travel unless absolutely necessary
Disruption from strike action will continue into the following morning, so customers should check before they travel
RMT's Lynch fears solution not possible due to 'political interference'
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT), said he fears finding a solution will not be possible because of “political interference,” as rail workers stage another rail strike.
Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain from Euston Station, he said the union had been working with Network Rail and the train operating companies but “the gap between us is still there”.
We’ve got to find a way to bridge that but I fear that because of the political interference that’s happening with the public transport and the Treasury, we’re not able to do that.
We’ve also got a dispute tomorrow with London Underground - which is more of the same that the funding from the railway has been cut and that means an attack on rail workers across the land and I think many workers are suffering from that at this moment.
They’re not getting a square deal but we’ll keep working with the companies to get a negotiated settlement and as soon as we can do that, will put it to our members and hopefully we can get the railway back providing service the that public needs.
We will work those problems through but what we need is the management to have the ability to negotiate and I think this has been has been partially caught up in the Tory leadership election or selection process that they’re going through and I think because those candidates have both both taken a turn to the hard right in this country, it’s very difficult to find the the ability to create a settlement.
Introduction: Only 20% of UK train services running as 45,000 rail workers go on strike
Good morning, and welcome to our live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets.
Many train platforms will be eerily quiet today on the first day of new rail strikes. Commuters and other travellers are facing further disruption over the next three days on rail, tube and bus services.
More than 45,000 rail workers go out on strike today, mainly from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) and Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), in long-running disputes over pay, jobs and conditions.
Both sides were talking about the latest strike action on BBC radio 4’s Today programme this morning.
Andrew Haines, chief executive of Network Rail, complained about
slow negotiations, painful negotiations moving over all the place, absolute lack of clarity in what it would take to call the strike off, shifting goalposts. They’re not good and we’re desperate to bring this to a resolution in a way that’s affordable for the country and which avoids the pain for my colleagues.
This is the biggest strikes that we’ve seen perhaps for 30 years on the railway and that’s because the employers, myself and the rail operators, supported by the government are saying the economic crisis which Covid has precipitated demands that we modernise.
Also on the radio, speaking from Euston station, Luke Chester, organising director at the TSSA in London, said the dispute was about pay, job security and working conditions.
TSSA members have not taken industrial action for a very long time in the majority of cases. It’s not something that we take lightly, it’s something that we take seriously.
What we need to resolve this dispute is a pay rise which reflects the cost of living increase that is affecting most people in this country very severely, we need job security …and we require guarantees from the employers that they are not going to rip up people’s contracts of employment, that they are not going to change conditions of working in the way we’ve seen for example at P&O.
He said the unions were “100%” willing to negotiate on working conditions and working practices, but had not been given the guarantees they were looking for.
What’s slightly disingenuous is that we have zero pay offer from the train operating companies, we have zero guarantees around conditions of service and we have zero guarantees around job security.
So while we’re talking to Network Rail and Mr Haines and his team are sat round the table with us, and we’re trying very very hard and he’s right it’s painful, we’re trying very very hard to make progress with them. Unfortunately we’ve got 15 train operators who are being told by the Department of Transport by Mr Shapps that they are unable and have no mandate to even sit around and make an offer.
He stressed that the unions were looking for a “package of measures” and that Merseyrail was able to make a 7.1% pay offer, which has been accepted by workers, because it is not controlled by the Department of Transport. Rail managers have also accepted a deal, a package of measures including a pay rise and guarantees around job security. Many were previously paid less than the people they managed, he said.
Clearly job security is paramount and many of our members haven’t received a pay rise in three years despite being key workers, despite working through the pandemic. Job security, pay is important and protection of condition of service.
Asian shares drifted lower, following in Wall Street’s footsteps, after the US Federal Reserve’s minutes of its July meeting pointed to a steady course of interest rate hikes ahead.
The minutes showed policymakers considered paring back the pace of future rate hikes in line with the slowdown in inflation, but saw “little evidence” yet that inflationary pressures were easing.
Japan’s Nikkei, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and China’s blue-chip CSI 300 index all lost nearly 1%. Over here, the UK’s FTSE 100 index dipped 0.2% to 7,497 while Germany’s Dax opened 0.2% higher, France’s CAC was flat and Spain’s Ibex edged up 0.1%.
The Agenda
9am BST: Norway Norges Bank interest rate decision (forecast: 1.75%)
10am BST: Eurozone inflation for July (forecast: 8.9%)
1.30pm BST: US Initial jobless claims for week of 13 August (forecast: 265,000)
3pm BST: US Conference Board leading index for July, home sales for July
Updated
