Unions vow to fight ministers’ proposals to curtail right to strike on railways

theguardian.com:

Unions have pledged to fight ministers’ “desperate” proposals to force staff to work should a national rail strike be called.

With ballots on industrial action across Network Rail and 15 English train operators closing this week, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said the government would consider imposing “minimum service levels”, effectively curtailing the right to strike.

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) and others said any such move would meet the “fiercest resistance”.

More than 40,000 RMT members are voting on whether to strike in the face of expected cuts including the loss of thousands of maintenance jobs at Network Rail, pay freezes and the closure of station ticket offices, after the government told the railway industry to find huge savings after a drop in revenue caused by the Covid pandemic. The results of the vote are expected on Wednesday morning.

Shapps told the Telegraph that ministers were considering passing laws that would fulfil a Conservative manifesto pledge to keep services running during transport strikes. “We had a pledge in there about minimum service levels,” he said. If they really got to that point then minimum service levels would be a way to work towards protecting those freight routes and those sorts of things.”

Unions said Shapps was talking about denying basic rights. The RMT’s general secretary, Mick Lynch, said: “Any attempt by Grant Shapps to make effective strike action illegal on the railways will be met with the fiercest resistance from RMT and the wider trade union movement.

“The government need to focus all their efforts on finding a just settlement to this rail dispute, not attack the democratic rights of working people.”

The Transport Salaried