Railway ticket office and platform staff vote to back strike action at Southeastern and Network Rail

Ticket office and railway platform staff working for Southeastern and Network Rail have voted in favour of industrial action, in ballots by the TSSA union.

According to the union, which announced the ballot’s result today, 73.9 per cent of Southeastern members balloted voted in favour of walking out while 85.1 per cent said yes to take action short of strike. Turnout was 69.7 per cent.

Network Rail members in managerial roles and controllers, consisting of more than 2,500 people met the threshold for strike action with 77.4 per cent voting to back a walk out.

Maintenance engineers also said they were prepared to take industrial action consisting of a strike, voting 69.2 per cent in favour.

However, employees in other management roles, consisting of more than 3,500 people, did not meet the threshold to take action consisting of a strike, with 68.2 per cent of staff backing action.

This band of employees will be able to take action short of a strike, as 86.8 per cent backed this.

This means that now the TSSA – which represents station and ticketing personnel – has now a mandate to carry out either of the two options.

No dates have been announced yet, as the union said it would now  consider next steps with workplace representatives.

TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes said: “The [Southeastern] results demonstrate that our members are utterly determined to fight for their pay, jobs and conditions. They are right to do so amid the escalating Tory cost of living crisis and with a chaotic government hell bent on making swingeing cuts to our rail network while inflation rages,” he added.

After Network Rail’s results came in, Cortes added: “I have already warned that we are likely to see a summer of discontent across our railways and these results greatly increase the prospect of major disruption as management grade staff in Network Rail have now given our union a mandate to call on them not to cover the roles of their colleagues taking part in strike action through their overwhelming vote in favour of action short of strike.”

The ballot comes on the heels of last week’s vote at several rail companies, including CrossCountry, LNER and C2C.

Train drivers’ union Aslef said earlier that eight operators voted in favour of industrial action, in what could effectively be the first national strike since 1995.

The union RMT – which last month brought the country to a standstill after 40,000 of its members walked out over job cuts and salaries – announced on Thursday Govia Thameslink workers would join whenever the new strike days are.

The participation of Govia’s workers to any new strike could create even more disruption as the company operates busy commuter services – including Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern and Gatwick Express, Morning Wire reported.

“GTR staff are now able to join our fight and have a legal mandate to take action in the future, to get a negotiated settlement on pay, job security and working conditions,” commented the union’s boss Mick Lynch.

Lynch is currently locked in talks with Network Rail and the other 13 operators to avoid the threat of future walk outs.