Southern Rail: Union offers to suspend strike action amid train crisis

Solution: RMT officials have offered to suspend action
Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

A rail union has offered to suspend industrial action against crisis-hit Southern Rail if it delay its plans to cancel 341 trains a day.

Mass delays and cancellations have hit Southern services over the past few weeks due to industrial action and a shortage of train crew.

Officials from Southern's owner, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), told MPs this week that people had lost their jobs and were not getting home after work to see their children because of the delays.

As a result, The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union has offered to suspend industrial action, but only if the rail operator pulled back from making the changes.

In an open letter to GTR Chief Executive Charles Horton, RMT leader Mick Cash said: "The RMT will suspend calling any further industrial for the next three months if you will also suspend your proposals for a similar period.

"This will then allow us the time and space to sit down together and try and explore options that will seek to deliver the lasting improvements to service and reliability we all want.

"I do hope that you can respond positively to these proposals and I look forward to hearing from you."

The company plans to make the changes next month, so that drivers will be responsible for closing doors.

Southern says there will be no job losses, and no-one will take a cut in salary, while the union believes conductors should retain a safety critical role.

A Southern spokesman said: "We welcome the suggested suspension of industrial action, but we don't need three months to resolve this.

"We are ready to sit down with the RMT and discuss a way forward that we believe that they, our employees and customers will welcome, and can bring an end to this dispute.

A map of disruption to services supplied by Southern Rail
Southern

"In the meantime we would ask the RMT to work with us, as previously requested, to address the main cause of the current service problems, which is the remarkably high levels of sickness amongst some RMT members."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT