Train drivers at five rail operators have voted to continue taking strike action for six months in the long-running dispute over pay and conditions, it was revealed today.
Aslef said its members on Chiltern Railways, c2c, East Midlands Railway, Northern and TransPennine Express had overwhelmingly backed carrying on with action.
Unions involved in disputes have to reballot their members every six months on continuing with industrial action – and the deadlock has still not yet been broken.
It comes just one week after rail services returned to normal on February 7 after a wave of strikes and other forms of industrial action by train drivers in their dispute.
Services across Britain had been crippled by a series of walkouts and a nine-day ban on overtime, which impacted trains run by the likes of LNER and Avanti West Coast.
Aslef members at rail operator Northern voted by 93 per cent to continue striking
Aslef members at c2c voted by 89 per cent to continue strike action for another six months
East Midlands Railway members of Aslef voted by 90 per cent to continue striking
Aslef said its members at Chiltern Railways voted by 94 per cent to continue striking
Aslef members at TransPennine Trains voted by 95 per cent to carry on with strikes
None of the train companies affected by that recent action used new regulations aimed at ensuring a minimum level of service during strikes.
Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef said today: ‘These results show – yet again – a clear rejection by train drivers of the ridiculous offer put to us in April last year by the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) on behalf of the train operating companies with whom we are in dispute.
‘The RDG knew the offer would be rejected because we had told them that a land grab for all the terms and conditions we have negotiated over the years would be unacceptable.
‘Since then our members have voted, time and again, for strikes. That’s why Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, is being disingenuous when he says that offer should have been put to members.
‘Drivers obviously wouldn’t vote for industrial action, again and again and again, if they thought that was a good offer. They don’t.
‘That offer was dead in the water in April last year – and I think Mr Harper knows that.’
Aslef members at Chiltern Railways voted by 94 per cent to continue striking.
Passengers at London Waterloo railway station during the last Aslef strike on January 30, 2024
A view of Farnborough railway station in Hampshire during the last Aslef strike on January 30
The figure was 89 per cent on c2c, 90 per cent on East Midlands Railway, 93 per cent on Northern Trains and 95 per cent on TransPennine Trains.
The turnout on all the ballots was at least 70 per cent.
Mr Whelan said the union remained open and willing to talk about a revised offer.
‘That’s why we are asking the Secretary of State for Transport, or the Rail Minister Huw Merriman, to come and meet us,’ he said.
‘Mr Harper hasn’t seen fit to talk to us since December 2022; Mr Merriman has not been in the room with us since January 2023; and the RDG has not talked to us since April last year.
Train drivers from the Aslef union on the picket line at London Waterloo station on January 30
‘Today we are saying, clearly, to Mr Harper, Mr Merriman, the RDG and the TOCs (train operating companies): come and talk to us.
‘Let’s sit around the table and negotiate. You don’t want any more strikes, and we do not want to be forced to take any more industrial action, although we have the renewed mandates to do just that.
‘We want to find a resolution to this dispute, for members who have not had a pay rise since our last deals ran out in 2019, and the only way to resolve this dispute is for the employers, and the government that stands behind them, to come and talk to us.’
contacted the RDG and Department for Transport for comment today.