Driver-Only Operation

The Disability News Service (a reliably good source of information on all matters concerning disabled people) has revealed a report that Thameslink is inaccessible to many disabled people, and that much of the rail network has the same issue. Crucially, it points out that improvement to physical...

Off The Rails is very pleased to see that Merseyrail guards have rejected the company's offer to resolve their long-running dispute about defending their safety-crtiical role. In RMT's referendum, guards voted 99-82 against the offer, with 84% voting. We suspect that even those voting to accept did...

RMT is currently conducting a referendum of its guard members on at Merseyrail over an offer from the employer to settle their long-running dispute over the introduction of DOO. The first thing to acknowledge about this settlement, if it is approved by the members, is that despite its numerous and...

RMT had named more strike dates on Cross Country in the ongoing fight to defend the safety-critical guards’ role. However, the employer called in the lawyers, and the union has called off the strikes and cancelled the dispute. Britain’s anti-union laws are so harsh and unjust that the mere...

Train managers and senior conductors on Cross Country are determined to put a stop to management's efforts to undermine their role. The company seems to think that it is OK to step up other grades to cover these, which is unfair on the staff involved, and is an obvious ploy to making the safety...

After the unions settled their dispute with South Western Railway over driver-only operation, the company has taken advantage of the situation by further attacking workers, proposing to remove the Rail Operator from the dispatch process. The RO will only monitor the PTI at every station other than...

The dispute over DOO (driver-only operation) on SWR seems to be drawing to a close as the fire that was present at the start has been extinguished in a prime example of what not to do with an active and angry group of workers. The dispute started way back in August 2017 when management refused to...

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, guards...

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...