By the end of the next round of national rail stoppages, members of the RMT union who work for Network Rail will have been on strike for 20 days in 200 since midsummer 2022. An overtime ban that has run for weeks over Christmas and new year has cut earnings still further.
But as the longest sustained shutdown of large parts of the rail network since 1989 began, the boss of the main rail union said the walk-outs have been effective.
Speaking exclusively to The Independent, general secretary Mick Lynch said: “We’ve put it on the front page of the papers that they are planning to cut 50 per cent of maintenance scheduled tasks.
“They’re prepared to take risks with safety. They’re prepared to rip up our members’ conditions in order to save money and we’ve stopped them implementing the changes that they wanted to implement two years ago.
“We don’t accept the changes. We don’t accept they’re necessary.
“It’s not reform, is it? It’s cuts.”
Another round of rail industry walk-outs has begun, leaving Britain with only a skeleton service for the first working week of the new year.
More than 40,000 members of the RMT union employed by Network Rail and 14 train operators are stopping work for 48 hours on 3-4 and 6-7 January.
On the intervening day, Thursday 5 January, thousands of train drivers belonging to the Aslef union and working for 15 train operators will strike.
Mr Lynch said his members’ lost earnings, which are now running to thousands of pounds for some workers, would not make an agreement more difficult.
“The price is the same. We’ve got to have a settlement on the conditions. We’ve got to have a job security agreement. We’ve got to get a pay deal.
“What we need to do now is to move towards a settlement. And the only people that can facilitate that are the government, who are doing nothing whatsoever.”
The latest figures from the Office of Rail and Road show the number of passengers has fallen by 20 per cent compared with pre-Covid figures, while ticket revenue has fallen by 29 per cent.
The government insists that the precarious financial state of the railway demands urgent reforms, from modernising maintenance to making Sunday part of the working week for all rail companies.
But the RMT general secretary said more staff are necessary, not fewer.
“Every day on the railway when our members are…
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