Scotrail Dispute Rolls On

Posted in Off The Rails's blog on ,
ScotRail station

The Scotrail dispute is still going strong, with guards not working Sundays or overtime. But management have not even offered a meeting, let alone a retreat from their scrapping of overtime rates.

Scotrail’s social media posts telling passengers we demand a 50% rise in overtime payments are really annoying strikers, but we know that the same post appears on Twitter every weekend. And since management offered to extend ASLEF's rest day working agreement until October this year but stopped the agreement for other grades last year, we know how unfair the company's position is.

Ticket examiners have joined the guards in taking action, but a ballot of engineers fell a single vote short of the turnout threshold required by anti-union laws. Traincare staff have launched a dispute following a manager being promoted after breaching dignity and respect policies.

While support for the strike is likely to continue, the company is just reverting everyone to spare on a Sunday rather than an actual turn. It looks like Abellio has given up even trying to resolve the dispute because it will no longer have the franchise after next March.

It's an odd dispute to be involved in. Hopefully, more grades starting to take action will have a domino effect, but it would also be good to consider other ways of cranking up the pressure so that the company doesn't just ride it out for another nine months.

What we are missing is a concerted effort to get union members together to discuss where the dispute is going. There are some ideas being floated - sich as a day of action across the whole network - and bringing members together will undoubtedly generate more.

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