The Transport Secretary Mark Harper has told the Rail, Maritime, and Transport (RMT) union to get “off the picket line and round the negotiating table,” while the RMT has blamed the government as a 48-hour train strike crippled services up and down the country.
Half of Britain’s railway lines were not operating on Tuesday, which is the first day back for workers in England and Wales after the Christmas and New Year break.
Scotland has an extra public holiday on Tuesday but those heading back to work on Wednesday are expected to be affected by the industrial action and few trains are running north of the border.
Train drivers with the ASLEF union will go on strike on Thursday and a second 48-hour walkout by RMT staff is due to begin on Friday.
Harper told Times Radio: “There is a very fair pay offer on the table which has been accepted by two of the trade unions on Network Rail. The RMT recommended that their members didn’t accept it, but actually a third of their members still voted in favour of it.”
He said: “It is time that the RMT got off the picket line and round the negotiating table to try and hammer out a deal with the train operating companies and Network Rail.”
But RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch, speaking to the PA news agency from the picket line outside London Euston station, said: “The government and the companies have not put any fresh proposals to us. They know what needs to be done to move towards a settlement, how to work through the problems and get to some documentation that we can all support, but that’s not happened so far.”
Lynch said: “We’re hoping in the next few days that they will come to us and propose more meetings and more sessions of negotiation but at the moment that’s simply not there. The government has let these strikes go ahead and that’s unfortunate.”
Lynch—who took over as the head of the RMT in May 2021—said, “We would like to get into a situation where we’re negotiating constantly with the companies and where we didn’t have to have strike action, and then work up a settlement that our members could vote on and accept.”
Harper—who was appointed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in October—said he had “perfectly constructive discussions” with the leaders of all the unions and he said more meetings would take place next week.
“I would, frankly, rather they were taking place this week rather than the strikes happening, but that was a matter for the unions,” he said.
Lynch said the union had been given a mandate by its members to carry out strikes right through until May 2023 and he said, “If we have to go further, that’s what we’ll need to do.”
Conservative MP Ranil Jayawardena wrote on Twitter: “[Rail workers] have been offered a nine percent pay rise and, whilst the TSSA [union] have accepted it, the RMT have continued to reject it. It’s important that a good, reliable service is offered to those who need to travel—and the RMT’s approach is unacceptable.”
But the RMT said Jayawardena was being “extremely disingenuous” and responded on Twitter: “That offer was not to all rail workers. The Network Rail offer included a five percent and four percent pay rise over a two-year period with thousands of job losses, a 50 percent cut in scheduled maintenance tasks and a 30 percent increase in unsocial hours.”
A New ‘Winter of Discontent’?
In 1978/1979 the tabloid press coined the term “winter of discontent” after dozens of strikes by workers over pay damaged the Labour government so badly that it lost in an election landslide to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives.Paramedics are due to go on strike on Jan. 11, nurses are due to strike again on Jan. 18 and 19, and teachers, firefighters, and junior doctors are all being balloted over strike action this month.
