RMT says cost of resolving Southern guards dispute a "tiny fraction" of Government bail-out and parent company profits
ON THE SECOND DAY of the latest phase of strike action on Southern Rail, RMT revealed that the cost of resolving the dispute would be a tiny fraction of the £20 million bail-out thrown at the company by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and a drop in the ocean compared to the £157 million in profits being stockpiled by the Southern parent company Go Ahead.
RMT has calculated that simply filling the extra 20 guards posts effectively deleted from the establishment by the company back in January would not only guarantee the second safety-critical person on the trains, the issue at the heart of the dispute, but would also dramatically improve the reliability of the service to the travelling public across the board. The union estimates that the total cost would be comfortably less than £1 million.
RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said
“The key issue at the heart of the dispute is that GTR have refused to agree that passengers will keep the guarantee they currently have of a safety critical Conductor/ On-board Service Supervisor staff on their train in addition to the driver. The company say this is because in the event of the Conductor OBS not being available they have to cancel trains.
“However, the key plank of Southern argument is in fact a lie - non availability of conductors as a cause of train cancellations is almost statistically irrelevant accounting for 0.06% of cancellations, according to information provided the company to MP’s. That equates to 0.42 of a train a day whereas the southern mismanagement of the franchise accounts for hundreds of cancellations.
“What’s more even these small amounts of cancellations will be down to company mismanagement including not filling vacancies and poor rostering. The union position is clear, if the company hadn’t reneged on an agreement to fill 20 vacancies on the guards establishment back in January not only could they give the copper-bottomed guarantee of that second safety-critical member of staff on their trains but it would dramatically reduce the cancellations that are a matter of routine on this franchise.
“The cost of staffing up to a level that would meet the safety guarantees, improve dramatically the level of passenger service and set a framweork to resolve the dispute would be a faction of the cash Chris Grayling has thrown at Southern and the profits being stockpiled by Govia. RMT wants urgent talks around those issues to allow us to map out a solution to the dispute.”