Rail companies have issued a new injunction to passengers to only travel if absolutely necessary on both strike days and non-strike days next week, with one firm issuing what it called ‘an effective five-day travel ban for rail users’.
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), which represents train operating companies and on Sunday offered staff a pay rise equivalent to a 7% real-terms pay cut, said the deadline had had passed where disruption could be avoided even if strikes were called off.
Paddington Station. Image:RDG
It said it was asking passengers to only travel if absolutely necessary during strikes on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday next week and that special timetables for the five day period from Tuesday to Saturday would be available for passengers from Friday (9 December).
However, many rail firms have also told their customers not to travel on Thursday, when there is no strike, because of their inability to run a full service on that day.
These included South Western Railway and Northern Rail, with the latter saying that the two 48-hour walkouts, coupled with the knock-on impact on Thursday, ‘means an effective five-day travel ban for rail users’.
In reality, rail firms to not have the legal power to issue a widespread ban on the public using their trains.
RDG chair Steve Montgomery claimed that the RMT union had refused to put what he called ‘our proposed 8% pay offer’ to its membership, not mentioning that the offer is over two years, with only a 4% rise being offered this year.
The RMT alleged that the RDG’s ‘attempts to resolve the dispute by making a revised and improved offer have been blocked by the Government’, and that ministers had insisted that a widespread move to driver only operation ‘was inserted in to the proposals on Sunday evening as a pre-condition’.
It said the rail companies know that it could never accept this as a national principle for operating the railways.
At a hearing of the Commons Transport Committee on Wednesday, transport secretary Mark Harper repeatedly refused to confirm or deny claims that No 10 or the Treasury had insisted on inserting the DOO issue into the deal.
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