Off The Rails's blog

On 13 April the ASLEF Executive Committee met to hear reports from the Merseyrail Drivers' Company Council and the District 3 Full Time Officer Andy Hourigan.

Merseyrail's pay 'offer' to drivers for 2021 was 0% on pay, and a stipulation that any changes to Terms and Conditions negotiated needed...

Download it here

The Conservative Government is pushing through a new law, 'The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill', that will restrict our right to protest effectively. It will empower the police to stop 'disruptive' protests, ie. ones that have an impact and get attention. The government is thinking of...

What is going on with pay in our industry? It seems that the TOCs that make up the Rail Delivery Group, under orders from the DfT, are making a standardised pay offer, something like "0% on pay and any changes to Terms and Conditions must be 'self-financing'".This raises at least a couple of...

Scotrail conductors now have five Sundays' action under their belt with one more scheduled. Each as been as solid as as the first, and quality Sunday time has been had by all.

The company has tried a poisonous campaign to portray conductors as harming key workers - apparently ignoring the fact...

The ScotRail conductors’ strike got off to a cracking start yesterday. Solid action saw every train cancelled other than a few DOO trains in the central belt.

Guards are angry that the company has taken away their enhanced pay rates for rest day working, especially as drivers are still being paid...

The dispute over DOO (driver-only operation) on SWR seems to be drawing to a close as the fire that was present at the start has been extinguished in a prime example of what not to do with an active and angry group of workers.

The dispute started way back in August 2017 when management refused to...

Network Rail’s Capital Delivery Eastern has told its staff that up to one third of of jobs are going. So much for ‘Build Back Better’! Everyone is now worried about what's coming our way.

Capital Delivery Eastern is responsible for many big projects such as the current scheme to remodel the track...

Cross-posted from our friends at Tubeworker:

District line drivers were due to start industrial action this weekend, as the company ploughs ahead with its imposition of ATO (SMA3) without adequate support or training.

But RMT has called off the action after the company threatened to seek a...

A track worker writes ...

Network Rail has circulated a list of aims to 'recover' from the effects of lockdown and Covid 19. We have a big fight coming our way. We will need strong organisation and unity to win it. But although some people will say that means not criticising the union's actions...

RMT has announced it plans to move to a national dispute "footing" with Network Rail, after thousands of potential job cuts were announced, as part of cutbacks that involve halving the frequency of safety-critical maintenance work.

Network Rail workers also face an open-ended pay freeze, as do...

Our printable Off The Rails bulletin urges action to break the pay freeze that companies across the industry are trying to impose, and looks at various issues within Network Rail. Download it here.

Last year, Network Rail pushed through a costly reorganisation called 'Putting Passengers First'. It created new regional structures, devolved some centralised functions, deleted some job roles and created others. It displaced people, but it did not intend to reduce headcount overall.

But before...

We've been told that pay talks for all grades in Network Rail will start in February. But the company has set the tone by emailing us to say that the TOCs are freezing pay and money is tight.

The pay rise for ops and maintenance was due in January, so Network Rail has already dragged its heels...

Network Rail has just published its ethnicity pay gap report for 2020. The results are a bit better than Network Rail's first report last year but still show big problems.

The ethnicity pay gap is the difference in the average hourly rate of pay for workers from black and ethnic minorities...

The Network Rail Chief Executive's New Year's message to staff was a warning about financial challenges facing the industry, rail reform and uncertain times ahead.

January 2021 is also the first time that Network Rail employees are no longer covered by a No Compulsory Redundancies Agreement. As...

Rail minister Chris Heaton-Harris has written to Train Operating Company (TOC) bosses to tell them there is "no budget" for any further subsidies to increase workers' pay.

TOCs are private companies and can set their own pay policy, but this is as close to an imposition of a pay freeze on...

RMT launched a new ballot for industrial action on Merseyrail on 21 January. The vote runs until 11 February.

The union gave bosses a November deadline to open talks on a new pay settlement. With the employer having failed to meet that deadline, the union quite rightly declared a dispute and has...

RMT members in the offshore industry, working for the Vatenfall wind farm company, are facing a "fire and rehire" attack; they say their employer has threatened to sack workers and re-engage them on worse terms and conditions. The new contracts will involve a number of detrimental changes, including...

What kind of union do we need? There are strengths and weaknesses in our current union set-up. Union officials will often have you believe that things can only be done the way they are done, because ... well, because they have always been done that way.

We do not agree. We have several criticisms...

RMT activists are rightly fond of emphasising that the Annual General Meeting (AGM) is the "parliament of the union", the highest democratic assembly with supreme decision making power. The 2020 AGM obviously took place in exceptional circumstances, and was conducted on Zoom. On the first day of the...

Introducing Notts Off The Rails - a rank-and-file bulletin for rail workers in Nottingham - online here.

Good to see that station security guards have now got the bodycams they’ve been promised for years; bad that it took a serious assault on one of them to achieve it. After that happened security personal were told that they should only observe and report incidents but not to get involved; we hope...

It is a depressing fact that although women are 51% of the population only 16% of the current rail workforce is female; this figure falls to a shocking 6.5% amongst train drivers.
A recent report into railway recruitment, ‘Back on Track’, noted that 43% of women rated flexible working opportunities...

This is a "shopfloor" view of the ongoing dispute between Abellio Scotrail and its employees. It should be noted, though, that the majority of RMT members did not want to take this action, especially at this time. However, like most dealings with private, for-profit companies, nothing is ever that...

RMT is balloting members on ScotRail and TransPennine Express in disputes over pay and conditions.

Nearly 2,500 workers are being balloted on ScotRail, in a vote that closes on 8 December. An RMT statement said: "The union has been trying to secure a pay rise for 2020 for all Scotrail workers...

Alstom workers have launched a series of strikes, aiming to smash a pandemic pay freeze imposed by penny-pinching bosses.

The workers, who perform maintenance on rolling stock, struck at depots on Alstom's West Coast contract on 29-30 November, and will strike again on 3-4, 8-9, 13-14, 17-18, and...

The RMT Young Members Committee has designed a new badge. Nothing wrong with that. But the slogan on the badge, "Always vigilant", has a meaning that is less than edifying. While “vigilance committees” in the unions under the influence of the Communist Party of the 1920s are worthy of study, if not...

ScotRail guards based at Glasgow Central station will strike every Sunday between 29 November and 3 January, in a dispute over bosses' abuse of disciplinary procedure.

The strikes are accompanied by a ban on overtime, rest day working, and higher grade working from 30 November to 2 January....

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash has announced his retirement, only a year into his second term. The announcement was made during a chaotic Annual General Meeting, conducted online. Many delegates and union activists had criticised various aspects of AGM proceedings, including a decision by the union...