British rail ticket staff 'vote for strike'
Ticket office staff at a leading British rail firm are believed to have backed industrial action in a row over jobs.
The result of a ballot of workers at South Eastern Trains (SET) will be announced today, but union leaders said they expected a vote in favour of a strike.
The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association said it had received strong backing from the public since it announced the ballot in opposition to planned cuts in ticket office opening hours.
The union said up to 100 jobs could be lost and the public will end up with a worse service because a planned increase in ticket machines was a “poor substitute” for staff.
General secretary Gerry Doherty said: “The last thing our members want to do is to go out on strike, but they are sick of being treated with contempt by South Eastern Trains.
“The company seems intent on railroading through these cost-cutting measures regardless of the genuine concerns raised by staff and passengers alike.”
Meanwhile, members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union today renewed its called for SET to be kept in public hands rather than being “re-privatised”.
The franchise was taken away from Connex two years ago today and has been run by the public sector since.
“Since Connex was booted off South Eastern Trains its services have been getting steadily better and there are 500 more staff around, yet the operation is costing taxpayers £1m (€1.46m) a month less,” said RMT general secretary Bob Crow.
“Whatever way you look at it, South Eastern Trains is a public sector success story and it would be nothing short of a betrayal to throw it back to the privateers to bleed dry again.”
RMT members and officials will lobby commuters at London’s Cannon Street station today to seek support for its campaign.
The RMT is also balloting its members at SET for industrial action.
Keith Norman, general seretary of the train drivers’ union Aslef, said Government plans to sell off the franchise again amounted to the “politics of the madhouse and the economics of the asylum”.
He added: “Tony Blair says he wants to see improvements in public services. South Eastern Trains has done that. The public company has proved beneficial to the customers, the staff and the taxpayer.
“But despite these improvements, the Government intends to re-privatise it.
“The obvious conclusion is that it doesn’t care about service, it cares about the dogma of privatisation.
“This is exactly the allegation it made about the Tories when the privatisation disaster began.”
