TENS of thousands of rail workers in dozens of infrastructure and operating companies are to be balloted for strike action.
This is after employers failed to agree unconditionally to a four-point formula to avert a pensions crisis in the industry, the rail unions announced yesterday.
‘The industry now faces the prospect of the most comprehensive stoppage since the general strike 80 years ago,’ the RMT stated.
Rail unions RMT, TSSA, ASLEF and engineering union CSEU held a lobby of parliament yesterday and balloting will start on 17 May, with results expected from the end of the first week in June.
‘The employers have failed to give us the assurances we have been seeking to avert the pensions crisis facing us, so we have today given notice that we will be balloting our members across the industry for strike action,’ said RMT General Secretary Bob Crow.
On yesterday’s lobby Richard Clarke, an RMT member from Worthing, Sussex, said: ‘At the moment we pay about seven per cent of our wages into our pension.
‘Under the proposals put forward by the different railway companies, it could increase to between 11 and 18 per cent, or even more.’
Worthing RMT member James Sellwood added: ‘I don’t see why we should pay more. The companies took a pension break so they didn’t have to pay in and now they want us to make up the shortfall.’
AMICUS West Midlands Regional Officer, Bob Rixham said: ‘We are fully behind the four objectives:
‘1) No increase in contributions above 10.56 per cent;
‘2) No reduction in benefits;
‘3) Schemes to be open to all employees, current and future;
‘4) Streamlining of the 103 sections of the railway pensions scheme to reduce the costs.’
John Wall, General Secretary of the CSEU (Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions) told News Line: ‘I think the result of the ballot will mean strife across the railways and try as they might the government will not escape blame when it is being apportioned by the public.’
