Another Southern rail strike is going ahead: RMT announces 24-hour walkout next week
The RMT union has announced a fresh 24-hour strike on Southern rail will take place on Wednesday 22 February in the long-running staffing dispute.
Conductors will strike for 24 hours between 00:01 and 23:59, after fresh talks broke down yesterday.
Read more: Days lost to strike action soared 89 per cent last year
Mick Cash, RMT general secretary, said: "The abject failure by Southern rail in yesterday’s talks to take the safety issues seriously has left us with no option but to confirm further action. These disputes could have been settled if Southern/GTR had listened to our case and given the guarantee of a second-safety critical member of staff on their trains."
He added:
Instead they have shifted the goal posts even further and have now created a 'strike breakers’ charter' where one of the numerous new conditions where trains can run driver-only is during industrial action.
That is simply scandalous and a measure of the betrayal of our members as a result of the TUC-brokered deal with Southern in the drivers’ dispute.
Nick Brown, chief operating officer of Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), Southern's parent company, said: "We are disappointed that the RMT is going to heap yet further misery and disruption on the travelling public. We aim to run as full a service as we can."
During the last conductor strike on 23 January Southern said it ran around three-quarters of its normal service.
The long-running row over the role of the guard was reignited earlier this week ahead of talks at conciliation service Acas on Valentine's Day (no love lost here…).
Read more: RMT and Southern Rail talks break down
The RMT highlighted fresh figures it had compiled saying many train services continue to operate without a second member of staff, despite promises made by Southern bosses.
A Southern spokesperson said in response: "We said we would roster a second person to every train that had one before, and we are. However we also said in exceptional circumstances when an on board supervisor is unavailable we will run the train, rather than cancel it, because it is in passengers' interests to do so."