Union calls for better pay to halt rail strike

Union chiefs yesterday urged a rail firm to improve a pay offer to hundreds of staff who are set to strike in a dispute which threatens to cause chaos for thousands of travellers.

Up to 700 RMT and Aslef members will walk out on Wednesday and Friday next week after rejecting a 2.2 per cent pay offer from First Transpennine which runs services between Liverpool and Manchester and the East Coast and Newcastle.

The dispute ahead of the bank holiday could also seriously disrupt travel for passengers heading to the Leeds Festival.

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RMT general secretary Bob Crow yesterday claimed the rail firm had “only itself to blame” for action over the offer which amounted to a real-term cut.

“The company can hardly be surprised that our members have voted for action when its latest accounts show profits up 13 per cent, a whopping dividend of £42m paid to shareholders, and the boss, already on well over £450,000, handed a 5.8 per cent pay rise,” he said.

“He won’t have any trouble paying his gas bill, so to offer our members, who earn a fraction of that, an effective pay cut when inflation is at five per cent is an insult to the people who actually get out there and make the company’s money.”

A First Transpennine spokesman said it planned to issue a revised timetable shortly once it had worked out how many staff were likely to be on strike, claiming only 19 per cent of RMT staff had actually voted in favour of strikes.

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Managers and other non-union staff qualified to drive trains would be available, while it was confident the 30 stations it managed including Hull, Scarborough, Middlesbrough, Huddersfield and Dewsbury would run as normal.

Northern Rail said it was working with Transpennine to see what impact the action would have on its services which run on local routes in the region.