THE BATTLE is on! RMT confirmed yesterday that the Southern guards’ strike is going ahead. Meanwhile Southern Rail confirmed it will carry out its threat and sack every single guard!
After last-ditch talks broke down yesterday lunchtime, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), the parent company of Southern Railway, said: ‘We will press ahead with our proposals to modernise its services.’
GTR added: ‘There is a legal obligation to serve notice to employees in their existing roles and, at the same time, they will be asked to automatically transfer to the new role – if they want a job, they are guaranteed one.’
RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: ‘We put some proposals to Southern Rail to keep the safety critical guard and they rejected it. This means that the strikes are going ahead.’
14 days of strike action will now take place in five blocks, the first of which begins next Tuesday October 12. Cash added that the company also refused an offer of talks at ACAS.
He said: ‘Southern have also confirmed they are hell-bent on bulldodozing through a wholesale introduction of Driver Only Operation with 1,600 trains a day running without a safety competent guard by January.’
He stressed: ‘We want a guarantee of a second safety critical person on a train.’ Asked if people would lose their jobs, Cash said: ‘I would urge Southern not to sack people for standing up to make sure we provide a safe railway.’
He added: ‘We are about putting safety before profits. Quite clearly (Southern Rail owner GTR’s major shareholder) Go Ahead are for putting profits before safety.’ Cash said train operators’ representatives’ claim that Driver Only Operator trains are safe ‘are wrong. More and more now we are seeing people dragged off by trains.
‘We don’t want to see that get any worse.’ Cash added: ‘This week we have seen Southern launch a botched attempt to incite the public against their frontline workforce.
‘Now that same company have shown that they have no interest in negotiating with the staff union and are hell-bent on having a punch up with the rail workers who keep the travelling public safe.
‘Attempts to bribe and bully the Southern Rail staff with the threat of the sack leave an indelible stain on Britain’s railways.’
