STRIKING train drivers brought the Southern rail network to a halt yesterday in their dispute over safety.
Members of the Aslef union walked out for 48 hours at one minute to midnight Monday. A further 24-hour strike is set for Friday. On the early morning Selhurst, southeast London, picket line Aslef executive committee member Marz Colombini told News Line: ‘The strike is solid.
‘The feedback from members is very positive, they are 100% behind the issue of resisting any further extension of Driver Only Operation (DOO). It’s important to understand this is a position we’ve been pushed into. There was a meeting in Croydon convened by Tory MP Gavin Barwell at which a senior Department for Transport official Peter Wilkinson spoke.
‘He said that there was going to be a “punch up” with train drivers and that industrial action was a position he was going to push us into. That’s where we are today. The Aslef and RMT disputes are separate disputes around the same issue and we share the same concerns. We remain open to talks but they must be meaningful and constructive.’
As well as this week’s strikes, Colombini added: ‘We have a further week of strike action planned from Monday 9-14 January. Throughout that period our members are not working non-contractual overtime. Last week’s court case and yesterday’s appeal hearing are two significant victories for us.
‘They showed that the company’s attempt to use European law against a lawful ballot and industrial action was tenuous and desperate. Had they put the same amount of effort into trying to resolve this dispute we might not have been on the picket line today.’
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told yesterday’s Today programme: ‘This has nothing to do with new ways of working on Southern. This is about the unions fighting against modernisation. We are up against a group of unions that are mounting a politically motivated strike.’
He added: ‘I do not have powers to stop a lawful strike’ but he would look at all the options when this strike is over, and while he wasn’t ‘ruling anything in’ he wasn’t ‘ruling anything out’ either.
He claimed the strike was a ‘deliberate act of militancy’ and he would examine possible changes in legislation ‘very carefully’. He also told SkyNews: ‘If I could stop it (the strike) I would stop it now.’
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said the strike was a response to ‘ill conceived’ changes ‘fraught with danger’. He stressed: ‘The strikes this week are not, whatever Mr Grayling tries to suggest, politically motivated. We have a trade dispute with GTR/Southern, and only a poor government would seek to spin it any other way. I think their motives are clear.
‘I am more concerned, than either the minister or the company, about the safety of our members and the travelling public.’
