Plans for a national strike ballot are being put in place by the RMT union, following its decision to walk out on 6 July.
The RMT secured strike approval from Scottish signallers, who received reduced bonuses as a result of a previous walk-out and another for maintenance workers, who had extra cash frozen pending the outcome of the Grayrigg derailment investigation.
Not all balloted workers were in favour of industrial action however. The Scottish signallers and supervisors only voted 62% for strike action, while their Grayrigg colleagues polled 83% in favour. Despite this, delegates at the RMT”s annual general meeting in Edinburgh, voted unanimously to endorse the action and to ballot all 15,000 Network Rail members for a potential further national strike.
”The strike in the first instance will involve 400-plus signalling workers in Scotland and around 200 maintenance workers in the Lancashire and Cumbria regions,” an RMT spokesman told ABTN.
”The union is also putting in place plans to ballot the entire network concerning the same principles. We have tried to talk to Network Rail but they have said that this [issue] is non-negotiable.”
Network Rail has hit back saying that bonus payments are discretionary and are based on performance, while strike action in Scotland this year caused severe disruption to passengers and long-distance Anglo-Scottish services.
The decision to reduce bonuses reflected the impact of that industrial action, says Network Rail and signallers who went on strike have had ”150 (”300) per shift taken off their ”400 bonus entitlement.
”We are angered and extremely disappointed by the RMT”s plans for an unnecessary strike,” said Network Rail chief executive, John Armitt. ”Time and again this union adopts an outdated and divisive approach to managing employee relations, which will, once again, serve to punish and inconvenience passengers and rail users.
”We are working on plans to ensure that any disruption caused by the RMT”s strike action will be kept to a minimum.”
And in classically robust language, RMT general secretary, Bob Crow, has wholeheartedly backed the dispute, saying that: ”Network Rail should take a serious look at the double standards that have resulted in this dispute and think again about its rash refusal to negotiate."