As train drivers prepare for the next round of industrial action in a long and bitter dispute over pay and working arrangements, their union leader has vowed: “We’re in it for as long as it takes.”
Speaking exclusively to The Independent, Mick Whelan, the general secretary of Aslef, said: “We’ve been in this battle now for over 16 months.
“This is not a dispute of our making. It wasn’t us that decided not to give anybody a pay rise for half a decade.”
Aslef is in dispute with the 14 train operators in England that are contracted by the government to provide rail services. They include all the big intercity companies as well as train firms serving commuters around London, the Midlands and the North of England. Neither ScotRail nor Transport for Wales is involved in the dispute.
The union is seeking a no-strings pay increase followed by negotiations at a local level to modernise working practices – which will come at an additional price to the employers.
The train operators, who are represented by the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), say that even a modest wage rise is contingent on far-reaching reforms. Any deal will be signed off by the Department for Transport (DfT), with taxpayers footing the bill: ticket revenue is about 20 per cent down on pre-Covid levels.
Members of Aslef are about to launch nine days of industrial action that will cause the cancellation of tens of thousands of trains and hit the travel plans of millions of passengers in the run-up to Christmas.
Train drivers will refuse to work overtime on the first nine days of December. Within those dates, there will be a series of rolling strikes involving different rail firms in different parts of the country on different days.
It is a change of tactics in an industrial conflict that has seen national walk-outs by train drivers on 14 separate occasions since July 2022.
Mr Whelan said: “We feel that we needed to show that we can vary our tactics to meet whatever’s coming at us in the future.
“We’ve had no contact from anybody for the best part of nine months, neither from the RDG, the government or anybody else.
“I haven’t seen [transport secretary] Mr Harper since December of last year. I haven’t seen [rail minister] Mr Merriman since 6 January, when the deceitful deal that he was part of went out. And I haven’t seen anyone from the RDG from the act of…
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