Train drivers at five operators have voted to strike for six months over their long running dispute over pay and conditions.
Aslef has announced that drivers at Northern and TransPennine, Chiltern, c2c and East Midlands railways have backed industrial action.
Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef said, “These results show – yet again – a clear rejection by train drivers of the ridiculous offer put to us in April last year by the Rail Delivery Group on behalf of the train operating companies with whom we are in dispute.
“The RDG knew the offer would be rejected because we had told them that a land grab for all the terms and conditions we have negotiated over the years would be unacceptable.
“Since then our members have voted, time and again, for strikes. That’s why Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, is being disingenuous when he says that offer should have been put to members.
“Drivers obviously wouldn’t vote for industrial action, again and again and again, if they thought that was a good offer. They don’t.
“That offer was dead in the water in April last year – and I think Mr Harper knows that.”
He added, “That’s why we are asking the Secretary of State for Transport, or the Rail Minister Huw Merriman, to come and meet us.
“Mr Harper hasn’t seen fit to talk to us since December 2022; Mr Merriman has not been in the room with us since January 2023; and the RDG has not talked to us since April last year.
“Today we are saying, clearly, to Mr Harper, Mr Merriman, the RDG and the TOCs (train operators): come and talk to us.
“Let’s sit around the table and negotiate. You don’t want any more strikes, and we do not want to be forced to take any more industrial action, although we have the renewed mandates to do just that.
“We want to find a resolution to this dispute, for members who have not had a pay rise since our last deals ran out in 2019, and the only way to resolve this dispute is for the employers, and the government that stands behind them, to come and talk to us.”
