Union members at CrossCountry and East Midlands Railway vote in favour of industrial action
Around 300 members of the Union TSSA working at CrossCountry and East Midlands Railway have voted in favour of industrial action over salaries.
According to the union, which revealed the ballots’ results today, workers at both operators said they were prepared to both walk out and to take industrial action short of strike.
This means that now the TSSA union – which represents station and ticket office workers – has a mandate to carry out either of the two options.
No dates have been announced yet, as the union said it still needed to consider which steps to take next.
“The results demonstrate that our members are utterly determined to fight for their pay, jobs and conditions,” said TSSA’s general secretary Manuel Cortes.
“This is a strong outcome and it would be unwise for any rail company to ignore the feelings of our membership.”
The strike ballot comes on the heels of last week’s vote at Avanti West Coast, Morning Wire reported.
The union continues to ballot workers at Network Rail and several other operators, including LNER, C2C and Great Western Railways.
Ballots results will be revealed throughout this week and the next.
Commenting on the decision, the Department for Transport (DfT) said it was disappointed as strikes will “wreak further havoc on the very people unions claim to stand up for.”
“We urge the TSSA to reconsider and work with its employers, not against them, to agree a new way forward,” a spokesperson said.
The ongoing situation was described by Mick Lynch, boss of the union RMT, as the “fight of our lifetime.”
“This is as serious as it gets,” he told members during the union’s annual general meeting in Birmingham. “It is the fight of our lifetime and of our generation.”
The RMT created havoc across the country in late June, as 40,000 of its members walked out for three days over job cuts and salaries, Morning Wire reported.