Rail strikes in October to target Conservative conference

theguardian.com:

Disruption to rail services will resume after the Queen’s funeral, with drivers at 12 train operating companies staging further coordinated strikes at the start of October.

Operators are understood to have been notified of two 24-hour walkouts on 1 and 5 October, which would affect services across Britain and bring rail chaos at the beginning and end of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.

The Aslef union declined to comment and said it would not be making any statement until Tuesday out of respect for Queen Elizabeth II.

Strikes that had been scheduled by Aslef and the RMT union for 15 and 17 September were immediately called off by rail unions on news of the death of the monarch.

However, it was expected that more action would resume in a longstanding dispute over pay and working conditions on the railway, with train operators unable or unwilling to meet demands for a pay rise in line with the cost of living.

The operators affected, and unlikely to run any trains on strike days, include Avanti West Coast, Chiltern, CrossCountry and West Midlands Trains, all of which directly serve Birmingham, where the Conservatives will hold their annual conference, the first under Liz Truss’s leadership.

Sign up to Business Today

Get set for the working day – we'll point you to the all the business news and analysis you need every morning

The other firms at which drivers will strike are Greater Anglia, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, LNER, London Overground, Northern, Southeastern and TransPennine Express.