Rail strikes: Another union balloting members on industrial action - update on Tuesday June 14

Tens of thousands of rail workers have decided to walk out on Tuesday June 21, Thursday June 23 and Saturday June 25 across Network Rail and 13 operating companies.

The RMT union says its members have faced multi-year pay freezes, while it suggests plans to cut thousands of jobs would make the country’s railways unsafe.

Any passengers in Sussex travelling up to London on the Tuesday will be affected by strike action on the London Underground.

While staff at Govia Thameslink Railway, which operates Southern and Thameslink, have not backed strike action, these services are still expected to be ‘significantly reduced during this period’.

However Southeastern is one of the companies where staff have agreed to strike and it says this is expected to cause ‘significant disruption across our network’. Their strongly recommend passengers to plan ahead and to ‘not travel on these dates and make alternative plans’.

Train drivers’ union ASLEF has already announced strike action elsewhere in the country in late June and July, while Southeastern is one of the operators where it is balloting staff on industrial action.

Now a third union, the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association has announced it is also balloting more than 6,000 staff at Network Rail on strike action and action short of strike in a dispute over pay, conditions and job security.

TSSA is demanding a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies for 2022, no unagreed changes to terms and condition, and a pay increase which reflects the rising cost of living. It says Network Rail staff last had a pay rise between two and three years ago (varying between grades) and also worked throughout the coronavirus pandemic as key workers.

Voting opens on Monday (June 20) and closes on Monday May 11.

TSSA represents Network Rail workers in a wide variety of engineering, maintenance, supervisory, control and management roles. They manage short-notice access to rail infrastructure and keep passenger and freight services moving when timetables slip.

Its members also hold safety-critical roles at Network Rail-managed major rail stations such as London Bridge and London Victoria.

Industrial action ‘would be likely to have a severe impact on rail services at those stations’.