TALKS with transport secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan to avert further rail strikes have been constructive, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch told GB News.
He said: “I met with the new secretary of state yesterday and we had a good conversation.
“It makes a change to be discussing industry matters with the most senior person in the department – that’s a refreshing change.
“There’s not an outcome to that meeting because we still have to go back to the companies themselves to strengthen negotiations with Network Rail and the train operators but we put our points across.
“She made some points to me which are all fair enough. We made a commitment to her that we are seeking a settlement to this dispute, and we asked her to play a positive role and to be a facilitator to try and defrost the situation.
“…we haven’t gotten a negotiated settlement available to us, so we need a bit of a thaw in relationships, but also in the stances that the companies have been taken, because I think the previous incumbent Grant Shapps would lock the industry into some kind of spiral, which is very difficult for both parties to get out of.”
He added: “We’re looking forward positively to future discussions, because I think there was some confusion for the travelling public as to you know where that the logjam was – was it with the train operating companies or with the Government?
“There is Network Rail, which is half of people in the dispute, roughly, and the train operating companies, which is the staff that people see on most of their trains, the guards, the retail people, the people doing dispatch, stations and so forth, and the drivers as well.
“And then there’s the maintenance of infrastructure and signalers and operators of the railway who work for Network Rail. They both got a very tough agenda for any union to deal with about massive job cuts.
“We think there’ll be cuts to safety standards and safety regimes. They want to change the way that our members are employed.
“They want to rip up terms or conditions in a form of internal fire and rehire effectively put them on new contracts of employment.”
Mr Lynch said: “And of course, we’ve got a pay issue. We’ve not had a paid deal for most of our people for nearly three years now.
“We’ve had an ongoing pay freeze in our industry, and we all know what’s happening with prices, and inflation, so that’s a really difficult agenda to deal with.
“The companies want their pound of flesh, if I can put it that way. They want some changes.
“We’ve got to negotiate our way through on quite a complex agenda and as you know, they will call those changes modernisation, as you’ve discussed, no doubt with them.”
Asked about the Chancellor’s announcement about proposed new legislation aimed at curbing public sector strikes, he added: “We normally put complicated deals to our membership in referendums.
“We’re a highly democratic organisation, we have to take a vote on any industrial action that we’re contemplating and then the members decide what they want to do about that.
“And on this issue of the network, rail and train operating companies, restructurings, if you want to call it that modernisation as they’re calling it, we will be putting those to a vote anyway.
“We don’t need legislation and members will decide on that. And we’ve got disputes right now with other companies that are at the referendum stage.
“It’s a normal practice of the RMT to put many deals, unless they’re very straightforward, to a referendum anyway – we don’t need legislation…
“They want to change the laws in regards to us. What I can tell you is the offers that we’ve had would have been rejected massively eight, nine, ten to one – because they’re totally inadequate.”
