Hardline union bosses accused of sending progress into buffers – Rail chiefs complain that talks are pointless unless the other side is willing to reform
Hardline union bosses accused of sending progress into buffers – Rail chiefs complain that talks are pointless unless the other side is willing to reform
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>__Hardline union bosses accused of sending progress into buffers__
>__Rail chiefs complain that talks are pointless unless the other side is willing to reform__
>Tim Shoveller is a man with a tough brief. As Network Rail’s “chief negotiator” he has been locked in back-to-back meetings with the RMT, trying to stop next week’s national rail strikes.
>The union leaders are not the easiest of people to negotiate with. “It’s like dealing with people stuck in the 1980s,” a senior rail source said this week.
>More than 40,000 members of the RMT union will stage 24-hour strikes on June 21, 23 and 25 in a dispute over proposed job losses and their demand for pay rises that keep pace with inflation. Each strike will start at midnight and last 24 hours but disruption will affect the following days because staff will not have begun night shifts and trains will be out of position on the network.
>Sitting in the executive suite at Network Rail’s offices above Waterloo station Shoveller looks exhausted as he tells of trying to get the union meaningfully to discuss terms.
>At the heart of the issue is the growing cost of running the railway at a time when passenger numbers have still not recovered from the pandemic. On weekdays they have stabilised at about 75 per cent of pre-coronavirus levels with rail bosses believing that working from home means they will be unlikely to creep up any further.
> There is also growing pressure from the Treasury to rein in the ballooning costs of the railways. Since the start of the pandemic the government has pumped more than £16 billion into the network, the equivalent of more than £600 a household.
>Ministers believe that savings must to be made. The Department for Transport has increased Network Rail’s target for efficiency savings to £4 billion for 2019-24, leaving it trying to find an extra £500 million of savings.
>Shoveller insists that the savings can be made by a greater use of technology and voluntary redundancies. That would make a pay rise possible — but not at 11.1 per cent, the rate of RPI inflation, which is what the unions demand.
>They also claim their workforce is under threat and that Network Rail intends to make 2,500 staff redundant, something that Shoveller denies. Technology is also something that RMT bosses — including Mick Lynch, its general secretary — are reluctant to embrace. Shoveller said “there is, disappointingly, a history of resistance when we try to implement technology”. He said that the unions often reject plans immediately “as opposed to having a conversation to look at how we are going to do it pragmatically together”.
>His view is shared by Andrew Haines, the chief executive of Network Rail, who said: “I can give you many, many examples where the machinery of negotiation with a trade union means we can’t do sensible things.”
>He cited the operator’s attempt to launch an app called Blink to communicate with its employees. “It took nearly a year to roll it out,” Haines said, “because of failures to agree on an app that, all it does is allow people to receive messages.”
>At the time Lynch wrote to members saying that Network Rail needed to “guarantee that members are safeguarded from any potential abuse of the data the application collects”.
>He added: “I am afraid that the company have not replied to give the assurance sought. This puts members in a precarious position.”
>A senior rail source, not at Network Rail, said he felt “extremely sorry” for Shoveller having to sit down with the RMT, which is renowned for its militancy. “Strikes are supposed to be the last resort, not the first, which seems to be the view of the RMT.”
>Haines says there have been more than 60 meetings of the Rail Industry Recovery Group, which includes the RMT and other unions, including the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association and Aslef, the drivers’ union, since the start of 2021.
>“Tim has been one of the most assiduous attendees at those meetings,” Haines said. “It is fair to say we were making some progress, but there are some pretty entrenched attitudes around productivity and sticking to existing working practices.”
>He added that inflation had “shifted the dial” in terms of the “productivity that is now needed just to help balance the books in the rail industry.”
>Rail bosses repeatedly cite the fact that annual Rail Accident Investigation Branch reports contain details of rail workers killed inspecting tracks. Yet technology, including using drones, exists to aid in this process, which Shoveller insists would reduce the number of fatalities. It would also make savings, which in turn could be used to fund a pay rise for rail workers.
>“We can see a way of providing a pay rise for employees but it does result in the need to change the way we work. We believe very strongly that actually those changes will be positive for safety and improve the jobs that some of our people do. For example, rather than standing in the middle of the track looking at it, they’d be flying a drone. I think that’s probably a much better skill to have in this day and age than physically doing a job in a dangerous place.”
>Network Rail has made a 2.5 per cent pay offer to the TSSA, which is balloting its members for strikes, but talks are continuing with the RMT. The median pay of rail workers is £44,000.
>Haines said the business is looking to cut between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs, insisting that can be achieved through voluntary means, particularly as a “significant” number of employees are over the age of 60. The company has already lost 2,000 management positions, some through voluntary redundancies but also through attrition of staff leaving or retiring and not being replaced.
Well, yes, of course the union’s aren’t negotiating in good faith/at all. The unions have made it clear that they intend on striking as much as possible, and that they aren’t prepared to accept any kind of efficiency improving measures that would make the railways financially viable. They’re simply using striking as a way to blackmail the country for taxpayer funds to support jobs that the railways don’t need.
Unions standing in the way of technological progress is a tale as old as time – unions are luddites to the core, and any kind of efficiency improving innovation has to be forced through against their will, because they will not accept anything that improves productivity and reduces staffing requirements.
>The Department for Transport has increased Network Rail’s target for efficiency savings to £4 billion for 2019-24, leaving it trying to find an extra £500 million of savings.
Shoveller insists that the savings can be made by a greater use of technology and voluntary redundancies. That would make a pay rise possible — but not at 11.1 per cent, the rate of RPI inflation, which is what the unions demand.
Let’s unpick this a bit. The govt. has imposed an entirely abitrary ‘savings’ target on a public service that requires workers to take a pay cut (the actual effect of a lower-than-inflation rise) – and it’s the workers who are the problem ?
The improved offer was a 0.5% cash bonus. Same number of joblosses. Same number of conditions changes.
Literally 150 quid. Least fucking Judas was offered 30 pieces of silver. They offered us 8.5 give or take to sell our mates down the fucking river.
But we can waste £8b on PPE bought from cabinet members’ mates and that’s ok, right? We can afford that. Also the COVID loans that seem to have been offered without any verification being performed. Those are affordable. We also all agree that MPs should be paid £87k a year and do as many other jobs as they like, correct?