Train passengers in Britain were faced with deserted stations and travel chaos on Tuesday in what was described as the “biggest rail strike in modern history.”
Tens of thousands of rail workers walked out after talks between rail operators and the Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers’ union (RMT) failed to resolve disputes over pay, job security, and working conditions.
The three-day strike on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, involving more than 40,000 RMT members and 13 operators, was expected to affect 80 percent of services across Britain.
Operators not involved in the strike are also affected due to Network Rail signallers going on strike.
Much of Britain will have no passenger trains for the entire day on Tuesday, with services largely restricted to main lines operating in limited hours.
Londoners were told to avoid travel if possible as a separate one-day strike shut down the underground and other transport services in the capital.
London Overground and the new Elizabeth line will also be affected by the national rail strike for the rest of the week as parts of the services use national rail assets.
More cars, bikes, and pedestrians were on the road on Tuesday morning. Hospital staff said some colleagues slept at work overnight to maintain care.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, under pressure to do more to help Britons facing the toughest economic hit in decades, said the strike would harm businesses still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unions have said the rail strikes could mark the start of a “summer of discontent” with teachers, medics, waste disposal workers, and even barristers heading for industrial action as inflation pushes 10 percent.
“The British worker needs a pay rise,” RMT Secretary-General Mick Lynch told Sky News. “They need job security and decent conditions.”
The RMT said rail operators have offered a 2 percent pay rise, with another possible 1 percent if the union would budge over proposed job cuts and efficiency reforms—much lower than the pay rise of 7 percent demanded.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps accused the union of walking away from the negotiation table when “there’s a pay offer on the table and the job cuts are by and large voluntary.”
He told Sky News that the government plans the legislate to protect the travelling public from future disruptions by introducing measures such as minimal service levels.
“That would mean on a day like today a certain level of service would still have to be run and through changes to allow for transferable workers, that’s a much quicker change we could take,” he said.
“For future strikes, both in this current but also for other strikes, we are going to ensure that the law is firmly on the passengers side. One of the ways is through transferable skills, or agency workers, as you call it.”
RMT members on picketing lines were sceptical about the plan, saying there isn’t a supply of trained agency workers who can safely run the services.
Questioned about the plan, Shapps told Time Radio it was more about “transferable staff.”
“So it’s more about if you’ve got somebody at a Network Rail control room sitting at one computer, they'll be able to move to the machine next door to do a job that they’re totally qualified for. But at the moment the unions prevent this from happening. So it’s more about that sort of thing,” he said.
Johnson told his cabinet the strikes were “wrong and unnecessary” and said his message to the country was that they needed to be ready to “stay the course” as improvements to the way railways are run were in the public’s interest.
Last week, the government said railways need to be reformed as it’s not only competing with other modes of transport, but also “in a battle with Zoom, Teams, and remote working.”
But the union said tens of millions of pounds paid to rail operators under the pandemic were paid out as dividends to foreign investors.
Amanda Testa, branch secretary of the RMT in Bristol, said on Tuesday that the strikes are “about the fact COVID is being used as the reason not to give us a pay rise and the cost of COVID to business while profits remain protected.”
She described the offered 2 percent pay rise as “insulting” in light of current rates of inflation and said it is being used to strong-arm employees into accepting pension reforms and alterations to the terms and conditions of their contracts.
A survey by pollsters YouGov earlier this month found public opinion divided, with around half of those questioned opposed to the action and just over a third saying they supported it.
