Aslef action falls between two 48-hour strikes by RMT, knocking out most trains for five days
Train drivers have called a fresh 24-hour strike on 5 January in the long-running dispute over pay and conditions on UK railways.
The action at 15 train operators by members of the Aslef union falls between two 48-hour strikes by the RMT union on 3-4 and 6-7 January, meaning most trains will be wiped out for five consecutive days.
Continue reading...People urged only to travel if absolutely necessary on last weekend before Christmas
Rail passengers face another day of reduced services on Saturday as thousands of Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union (RMT) staff continue a 48-hour strike.
People have been urged to only attempt travel if absolutely necessary on the last full weekend before Christmas, with only a skeleton service running and all train journeys ending by early evening.
Continue reading...Workers and labor activists criticize Congress after it blocked a strike by voting to impose a contract agreement
Railroad workers and unions are ramping up pressure on the US Congress and Joe Biden to address poor working conditions in the wake of the recent move to block a strike when Congress voted to impose a contract agreement.
Workers and labor activists in America have criticized that action for undermining the collective bargaining process in the US and workers’ right to strike.
Continue reading...Prime minister makes statement in Commons, saying he wants to abolish backlog of unprocessed asylum claims by end of next year
The Conservative MP Adam Afriyie has been made bankrupt after a judge in a specialist court heard how he owed around £1.7m, PA Media reports. A bankruptcy order was made against Afriyie, who represents Windsor, at an online hearing in the insolvency and companies court today by judge Nicholas Briggs.
This story, by my colleagues Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason last year, explains the background to this case.
We completed our enquiry into the impact of the ending of freedom of movement on the adult social care sector in April and submitted the report to government and parliament. We recommended that care workers continue to be eligible to apply for a health and care worker visa and made some additional recommendations for changes to the immigration system to ease the burden on social care employers and migrants.
However, our main recommendation was that a minimum rate of pay should be established for care workers at a premium to the statutory minimum wage where care is being provided with public funds. We suggested that this should initially be set at £1 per hour above the national living wage but expected a more substantial premium to be needed to properly address the crisis in social care recruitment and retention.
Continue reading...Rail bosses and unions also signal they will not budge, as RMT’s Mick Lynch says there is ‘no deal in sight’
Rishi Sunak has said the government is unable to shift its position on pay, effectively implying the only way for strikes across the railway and other sectors would be for unions to back down.
In comments to his cabinet on the first day of four weeks of disruption to train services, the prime minister said: “While the government will do all we can to minimise disruption, the only way we can stop it completely is by unions going back around the table and calling off these strikes.”
Continue reading...Royal College of Nursing says Steve Barclay refused to discuss pay at meeting on Monday; Welsh nurses to strike after last-minute talks fail. This blog is now closed
Pat Cullen, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, told ITV this morning that there was no point talking to Steve Barclay, the health secretary, if he was not prepared to discuss pay. She said
What I’m saying … to the health secretary this morning, is if you don’t want to speak to me directly about nurses’ pay, we have engaged with the conciliation service Acas, they can do that through Acas, but our door is absolutely wide open and it appears at the minute that theirs is totally shut …
Fundamentally, I need to get to a table and talk to them about pay. This isn’t just me, it’s the 320,000 nurses that voted for strike action … They voted through an independent ballot that we carried out and surely to goodness you couldn’t look at one of those people this morning in the eye and say: ‘You’re not worth an extra brown penny’. In my mind they absolutely are.
I think it’s a very challenging international picture. About a third of the world’s economies are predicted to be in recession, either this year or next.
We’re no different in this country and truthfully, it is likely to get worse before it gets better, which makes it even more difficult when we have big public sector strikes going on at the moment.
Continue reading...The prime minister says due process needs to be followed after revelations about Baroness Mone in the Guardian
Everyone is hard up at the moment – including the Conservative party, it seems. According to Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham, the party is raising membership fees by 56%.
This morning Steve Barclay said Rishi Sunak was taking “a very strong stand in terms of the priority of getting inflation down”. (See 10.02am.) But not for Tory members, it seems.
Continue reading...MPs question transport secretary about reports government stipulation may have scuppered rail deal
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, has refused to deny reports that the government pushed rail companies to include future use of driver-only trains as a condition of a pay deal, thus potentially scuppering an agreement.
Under sustained questioning before the Commons transport committee, Harper at first said he had not seen the report, before repeatedly declining to engage with the subject beyond saying that reforms in how the railways were run were necessary to make savings.
Continue reading...Labour’s motion calling on the government to release all documents and advice relating to contracts awarded to PPE Medpro has also now passed
Labour received £4.7m in donations between July and September, more than any other party, PA Media reports. PA says:
The sum received by Labour is significantly greater than that donated to the Conservatives, which, according to Electoral Commission data, received £2.9m over the same period.
The Liberal Democrats recorded about £1.7m, according to returns submitted to the Electoral Commission, with more than £11m in total donated to 19 separate UK political parties.
Lynch, the RMT general secretary, said the government was to blame for not allowing the train companies to make an offer acceptable to his members. He said:
The government are running the playbook and the strategy for the railway companies and directing what is going on. They have held back even these paltry offers to the last minute.
He claimed the rail companies were not losing out from strike action, because they were subsidised by the government, and he described this system as “perverse and corrupt”. He explained:
They get indemnified for every day of strike action. They are paid the money that they would otherwise have lost, and the only people that lose are my members who lose their wages and the public and these businesses in hospitality who lose their income as well, while the people I negotiate with lose no money whatsoever.
It is the most perverse and corrupt system we have ever seen in British business where those people that are conducting the dispute make no losses whatsoever and the taxpayer subsidises those people by money given directly from the DfT [Department for Transport].
He said the timing of the latest strikes was “unfortunate”, but he claimed the union was forced to act. He said:
We have to respond to what the companies are doing, and they’re doing that very deliberately. They’re seeking to ratchet up the dispute.
He accepted that, although the additional strikes were over Christmas, when rail services were very minimal anyway, they would create further disruption for passengers. In the past Lynch had said the RMT wanted to avoid strike action over Christmas.
He defended the RMT’s decision to object to a move to driver-only trains. Driver-only operation was “less safe”, he said. Women and disabled passengers wanted to see guards on trains, he said, because they felt that was safer and more welcoming. When the presenter, Justin Webb, put it to Lynch that driver-only trains still had another member of staff on board, and that they just did not have a staff member operating the doors, Lynch said that was wrong. He said most of these services did not have anyone else on board, apart from the driver.
Continue reading...Rampant inflation and government policy has brought matters to a head: so where is disruption going to hit and what are the unions asking for?
Strikes are not something most managers think about. The oft-mentioned “winter of discontent” and year-long miners’ strike were features of the late 1970s and mid-1980s. Since then, industrial action in the private and public sectors has fallen to a level so low that academics have given up studying it.
When pay talks began a year ago for the current financial year, inflation was rising, but the Bank of England was reasonably certain it would be temporary. Union leaders prepared for a post-pandemic battle over pay, but not one that would probably end in strike action.
Continue reading...Workers could be prevented by congressional decree from striking over paid sick leave and quality-of-life issues
Railroad workers have expressed dismay at Joe Biden’s proposed solution to a looming strike that threatens to derail the US economy, which they say belies his image as the most pro-union president in generations.
As a 9 December deadline looms for the long-running labor dispute between the US’s largest railway companies and their unions, Biden has called on Congress to intervene and block a strike that could cost the US economy around $2bn a day by some estimates.
Continue reading...Citing ‘catastrophic’ risk to US economy, Nancy Pelosi announces impending vote to bind unions to September negotiations
The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced that her fellow members of Congress plan to vote this week on imposing a new contract for railroad workers to avert a looming labor strike.
Pelosi made the announcement late on Monday afternoon just after Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene to prevent a strike, a possibility if an agreement between the freight rail industry and unions is not made by 9 December.
Continue reading...Avanti West Coast, which received £343m subsidy, had worst punctuality performance among train operators
Labour has called on ministers to claw back £12m in dividends paid by Avanti West Coast to its shareholders last year, when it was subsidised by £343m by the taxpayer.
Figures released by the rail watchdog on Tuesday showed that Avanti paid out £12m in 2021-22 from management and performance fees.
Continue reading...With 9 December deadline fast approaching, business groups also push US government to intervene in labor dispute before holidays
Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, saying a strike would “devastate our economy”.
Biden’s move comes as business groups have warned that the looming strike would hit just before the holiday season and worsen the US’s inflation problems.
Continue reading...People urged to travel only if necessary as train drivers with Aslef at 11 rail operators take industrial action over pay
Passengers across Britain face another day of cancelled or disrupted rail services on Saturday as drivers for 11 train companies go on strike.
Train operators urged people to travel only if necessary and to check before setting out, with no trains or only a handful of services running on affected routes.
Continue reading...Royal College of Nursing announces unprecedented action, likely to to be first in a series of strikes by NHS staff over winter
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has announced its members will stage national strikes – the first in its 106-year history – on 15 and 20 December, with action expected to last for 12 hours on both days.
The unprecedented industrial action will seriously disrupt care and is likely to be the first in a series of strikes over the winter and into the spring by NHS staff, including junior doctors and ambulance workers.
Continue reading...One in 26 journeys disrupted with government accused of ‘abject failure’ to tackle worst offenders such as Avanti West Coast
Rail cancellations have reached their highest level on record with more than 314,000 trains fully or partly cancelled across Great Britain in a year, a Guardian analysis reveals.
Figures from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) show that the proportion of cancelled services has more than doubled since 2015, rising to one in 26 of all train journeys being disrupted in the year to 15 October, the latest date for which figures are available.
Continue reading...Action is planned for 3, 5 and 7 November; London Overground and tube staff will strike on 3 November
Network Rail workers are to stage fresh strikes in the bitter row over pay, jobs and conditions, threatening fresh disruption to services.
Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) will strike on 3, 5 and 7 November.
Continue reading...The third-largest maintenance workers’ union opposed the deal, saying concerns over paid time off remained unaddressed
The US’s third-largest railroad union rejected a deal with employers Monday, renewing the possibility of a strike that could cripple the economy. Both sides will return to the bargaining table before that happens.
Over half of track maintenance workers represented by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division who voted opposed the five-year contract, which contained 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses. Union President Tony Cardwell said the railroads didn’t do enough to address the lack of paid time off – particularly sick time – and working conditions after the major railroads eliminated nearly one-third of their jobs over the past six years.
Continue reading...Iconic ticket on one-way trip to transport history as city opts for payment by travelcards and mobiles
It has inspired French film-makers and songwriters, proven useful to cannabis smokers and aestheticians and served as an emergency bookmark or jotter – but now the Paris Métro ticket has reached the end of the line.
The city’s public transport authority is phasing out the rectangular pieces of cardboard that have kept the capital’s travellers on the move for the past 120 years.
Continue reading...