Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, last week approved a 14.25 per cent increase for the country’s 19,000 train drivers. It is to be backdated to cover the last three years.
After rail privatisation was effectively ended during the Covid pandemic, the Government now holds the industry’s purse strings and signs off on all changes to staff pay.
Announcing the train drivers’ pay deal last week, Ms Haigh said: “When I took this job, I said I wanted to move fast and fix things – starting by bringing an end to rail strikes.”
Aslef, the drivers’ union, announced a three-month campaign of weekend walkouts targeting LNER, the train company, within 48 hours of Ms Haigh’s announcement.
The union said the LNER strikes were not linked to the pay increase awarded to drivers, but had been called over the state of industrial relations at the state-owned business.
Rail firms’ £850m drop in ticket sales
The Department for Transport said Aslef’s previous two-year campaign of strikes by train drivers demanding pay rises had resulted in an £850 million drop in ticket sales for rail companies.
This is just over 10 per cent of the £8.6 billion the rail industry earned from passengers during the financial year 2022-23.
A DfT spokesman said on Tuesday: “Fixing our railways is at the heart of our plan to kick-start economic growth and ending the adversarial approach to industrial relations is the first step to delivering that.
“Today, officials resumed talks and held constructive discussions with RMT, Unite and TSSA to reset the relationship with unions for the benefit of passengers and the taxpayer. Further conversations will be held in the coming weeks.”
GWR declined to comment on the TSSA demand. The RMT did not respond to a request for comment.