SOUTH WALES SIGNALLERS’ STRIKE SOLID

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: january 2010 :: RMTnews 13 S ignalling staff in South Wales have taken a total of 12 days of strike action plans to impose new rosters at the South Wales Control Centre which is due to open this month. Management refused to attend a meeting between Christmas and New Year following six consecutive days of strike action to settle this issue. As a result RMT has arranged urgent ballots for strike action and action short of a strike at Radyr, Radyr Relief, Abercynon, Park Junction, St Fagan's Crossing, Little Mill, Lydney Crossing and Caldicott Crossing. Scab managers have been drafted in from all over the country, with only a few hours training to run the signalling with potentially serious consequences for services and safety. The union is compiling a dossier of failures to be submitted to the safety authorities. Over 40 basic errors were recorded by scab managers including more than one incident when two trains were moving on the same platform at Cardiff Central at the same time, with one train arriving from the west as one was departing east. Infrastructure maintenance staff also reported being refused 'T2 possessions' for routine engineering maintenance of the mainline because inadequately- trained strike breakers did not have sufficient knowledge. Attempts by Network Rail to shred the national rostering principles mean in practice that South Wales signallers will be forced onto eight hour shifts instead of being able to work 12 hour shifts as they currently do. This means that they will be forced to work an extra 80 days per year. “Our current working conditions are the result of a century of hard won rights which give signallers guarantees about negotiating their shift patterns within the working week,” said Newport branch secretary Steve Richards, speaking from the picket line at Newport Panel. “It also safeguarded minimum rest periods, holiday relief arrangements, the right not to be expected to work overtime and a number of other issues. Network Rail wants to tear all this up,” he said. The transparency of imposing the new shifts as part of a cost cutting exercise are made clear by the fact that many signallers were originally forced from eight hour shifts to 12 hour shifts some years ago by Railtrack and Network Rail to save them from employing new staff. Now they intend to reverse the decision without reinstating the jobs that were cut in the first place. Network Rail attempted to present the move to eight hour shifts as being about improved safety, but this was exposed when the managers that were shipped in to cover the strikers’ jobs proceeded to work 12 hour shifts themselves. RMT general secretary Bob Crow congratulated the members’ on rock-solid strike action. “NR said the strike would have a minimal impact, but it is clear that despite dragging in ill-trained managers from all corners of Britain they were forced to curtail and cancel services on some lines. “This dispute is about cutting corners and demanding that staff are at managements beck and call regardless of the impact on home lives,” he said. SOUTH WALES SIGNALLERS’ STRIKE SOLID