Off The Rails's blog

The opening talks from our online meeting about fighting job cuts are now online, here.

This article, by rail worker Becky Crocker, was first published in the Solidarity newspaper, here.

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In recent months I have become increasingly aware of the lack of diversity in my workplace, a Network Rail office in London.

My suspicions about Network Rail were confirmed when I read in its...

RMT must address mental health issues and bullying allegations

External investigation needed, but union must change itself

Genuine debate, criticism, and accountability is essential, and is not bullying

For a union led by members, through our lay representatives, not by officers

The National...

Thursday 17 September, 16:00-18:00

Log in via Zoom here

Facebook event here

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In 1966, Asquith Xavier became the first black guard at Euston station, overturning a "colour bar" which prevented black workers from being employed in certain grades. His struggle was not the first that exposed...

Workers at the International Currency Exchange in St. Pancras are facing job cuts, with nine members of staff having been given redundancy notices. RMT reps are supporting them, but Off the Rails was a little alarmed to read some of the language in the union circular about the campaign.

It...

We send our solidarity and condolences to the family, friends, and workmates of the three people - two workers and one passenger - who died in the Stonehaven derailment on 12 August.

Donald Dinnie and Bret McCullough, the guard and driver killed, were members of RMT and Aslef respectively. Both...

Thousands of job cuts are being announced across the economy, including in the rail and transport industries.

Bosses at Wabtec rail refurbishment factory in Doncaster have announced 450 job cuts, 50% of the total workforce. Over 100 jobs are threatened on Heathrow Express. Select Service...

SSP Group the company that owns brands like Upper Crust and Cafe Ritazza as well as operating Burger Kings and over outlets in many stations is set to cut 5,000 jobs.

The coming onslaught on jobs is going to affect the entire industry and not just the frontline rail operational staff.

RMT...

We know that job cuts are coming, thundering down the track towards us like a runaway freight train, loaded with attacks on our pay, conditions and pensions as well.

Wabtec has already announced job cuts at its Doncaster site, Heathrow Express is threatening to cut over a hundred posts, and we...

Bosses at the Wabtec rail refurbishment factory in Doncaster have announced a plan to cut 450 jobs in several waves, starting in August and running through to March 2021. The cuts would halve the workforce.

The plans are now out for consultation, and responding should be quick and easy: not one...

Network Rail has ten lifesaving rules. These are supposed to be rules for all staff to follow to keep them safe. They are the focus of Network Rail’s staff safety strategy:

1. Always be sure the required plans and permits are in place before you start a job or go on or near the line.
2. Always...

An image is circulating on social media of a notice handed to outsourced cleaners, employed by the contractor Interserve, at Paddington station.

It insists that the toilets "always have an attendant in view", and accuses cleaners of "hiding in the room." How are cleaners meant to distance safely...

We send our condolences and solidarity to the family, friends, and workmates of Belly Mujinga, a station worker from Victoria who has died of Covid-19, after being spat on at work by someone claiming to have the virus.

This tragedy highlights the terrible risks to which frontline, public-facing...

It looks as though railway industry bosses will go for a unilateral ramping up of services from tomorrow, 11 May, despite no national agreement with our unions being in place to facilitate this.

Unions had been negotiating towards an agreement, with a projected date of 18 May in mind for a...

Notoriously exploitative outsourcing contractor Mitie has robbed cleaners on Merseyrail of wages.

Bosses have announced they're withdrawing from a recent agreement, due to be backdated to July 2019, to increase wages to £9/hour. This will leave cleaners £500 out of pocket and around £1,000 worse...

In another episode that proves we're not "all in it together" during the pandemic, and that bosses are definitely not suspending class struggle from their side, Select Service Partners (the agency that provides workers for fast food and coffee concessions, and some other shops, at train stations)...

A “joint statement”, published in the name of the Department for Transport (DfT), eight individual unions organising in the transport sector, and the TUC, has appeared online.

It reports the “first in a series of Ministerial calls” between the DfT and transport unions, and ends with an...

Greater Anglia management are systematically naffing off pretty much everyone who works for them.

The company has imposed new rosters for RPIs where everyone works alone all the time.

It has imposed a roster for train despatchers at Liverpool Street which breaks up the previous practice of...

On 29 January, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced what many had been expecting sooner or later since May 2018, that Arriva Rail North will be stripped of the Northern Railway franchise and that it will be taken into public ownership and run by the government's Operator of Last Resort....

Catering workers employed by Rail Gourmet at Paddington station, in West London, struck again on 30-31 January. The workers had previously struck on 10 January, in their fight for fair rostering practises and proper payment of allowances and bonuses.

Rail Gourmet is part of Select Service...

What do you do if you've had enough of abuse and assault, and if your employer doesn't seem to give a monkey's? You stop working, that's what.

When the destination boards went down at Manchester Victoria, and control were not passing on any information to platform staff about which train was...

Strikes due to continue on West Midlands Trains (which operates as West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway) every Saturday throughout December have been suspended, and RMT is putting a new deal to a referendum of its members, with a recommendation from the NEC to accept.

The deal...

The announcement by rail union RMT of a sustained programme of strikes on West Midlands Trains and South Western Railway represents a significant escalation and expansion of the union’s protracted and hard-fought war against the imposition of “Driver Only Operation”.

On West Midlands Trains...

On 26 November RMT announced that Northern Rail guards had voted "nearly 95%" in a ballot to approve further negotiations on "changes to the operational mode" to implement the promise made by Arriva Rail North via ACAS in February 2019 of a "conductor on every train... for the remainder of the...

There's been uproar on South Western Railway (SWR) today, as workers received a threatening letter from bosses, attempting to intimidate them out of striking. The letter, which we reproduce below, suggests workers or the union could be liable for any losses incurred during the strike, saying SWR is...

RMT is announcing a "major breakthrough" on Merseyrail, after negotiations produced a new offer including a method of train dispatch which retains control of the doors for the guard, in line with RMT policy.

The union says the "fine detail" still needs working out, but the fact that it has...

Rumours reach us that Northern's unpopular New Deal for Drivers (NDfD) is dead. We hope that's true. Time for the Northern drivers' Company Council to get into pay talks, reject the derisory 2.75% offer that the other unions look set to knock back and rejoin the collective bargaining process to help...

The railway system is notoriously and shamefully inaccessible to disabled passengers. And while painfully slow progress is made with physical accessibility, the employers' cuts to staffing make it harder for us to help disabled passengers. Moreover, the companies provide precious little training for...

Word has it that Northern Rail management have come up with a spiffing new idea for undermining the role of guard, and seem to think that we may be daft enough not to see through it.

It goes like this. The train pulls in to the station. The driver opens the doors. The guards steps onto the...