Southeastern is warning there will be severe disruption to train services in the first week of January as strike action by the RMT and ASLEF trade unions takes place.
On Tuesday 3rd, Wednesday 4th, Friday 6th and Saturday 7th January only a very limited service will operate on the Dartford lines, the Sevenoaks line, and the Highspeed route via Ashford while the RMT stages industrial action.
On Thursday 5th January, no trains will run at all because of action by the ASLEF trade union.
Scott Brightwell, Southeastern Operations and Safety Director, said: “We’re very sorry for the inconvenience that this industrial action by the RMT and ASLEF unions has caused. On RMT strike days, some routes will have a very limited service, and there will be no trains at all in some places. On Thursday 5th January there will be no trains on any of our lines. We urge you to check our dedicated, up-to-date, strike page before travelling.
“Train services are expected to be extremely busy on the routes that are running on RMT strike days, and so we’d advise our customers to make their journeys later in the morning and earlier in the evening if they can.”
Journey planners at www.southeasternrailway.co.uk and www.nationalrail.co.uk, as well as on the Southeastern app, are up to date.
Rail workers are striking in a dispute over pay, conditions and passenger safety issues. The RMT say this includes: “unsafe practices for the travelling public such as a 50% cut in scheduled maintenance tasks and an unacceptable hike in unsocial hours.
“On the train operators, RMT members would have been forced to accept a paltry pay sum, Driver Only Operations (DOO) across the whole network, and the closure of all ticket offices creating an inaccessible and less safe railway.”
Southeastern absolutely appalling service received recently, not to mention a massive price increase in tickets to Victoria. Next time i will drive and save all the aggro and expense.
If you count up all the costs of driving (not just fuel), then, for a single traveller, train is still cheaper.
And when it comes to aggro, I can’t think of anything worse than thrashing up a motorway to London, then having to find and pay for parking.
Iirc London & South Eastern Railway known as southeastern were rather naughty with £25M ! of tax payers money. So they got the elbow.
The current southeastern rail (they kept the name as rebranding was super expensive) British government as a temporary measure now runs the line as an operator of last resort.
The words operator of last resort have to be considered, maybe trade union needs to stop digging. Why make your business Not worth investing in.
Why is the picket dressed in a sinister KKK-styled outfit?
There isn’t anybody pictured in this article, what are you smoking?
It’s time postal workers and rail workers realised that they cannot hold onto their antiquated working practices. The rest of the UK work force has modernised and adapted and it’s time the rail workers and post workers follow.
Unfortunately a lot of the Unions are using their members as cannon fodder in their politically motivated war against the government and their loyalties to the Labour Party are only going to hurt the workers that they are supposed to protect.
Put simply the government and companies involved cannot afford the pay rises the Unions are demanding. Even if the Unions achieved their main aim of bringing down the government, their Beloved Labour Party would not be able afford the pay increases they are demanding as the figures involved are unsustainable and unworkable.
I am yet to talk to anyone who is on the striking workers side. The only ones who will end up crying will be the postal workers and railway workers. Evan the Nurses are starting to lose public support and sympathy.
We all want larger wages, shorter working weeks, more holidays and better working conditions but the Unions demands are not realistically affordable to the companies involved.
The government can afford to pay £100Ms for dodgy PPE.
It can afford to bung £170B to energy producers (by way of winter fuel allowance).
It’s got an extra £350M a week since we left the EU.
The Rail companies can afford £M pay packets to CEO, and vast payouts to (foreign) share holders.
Thats untrue “Concerned”, on this mornings BBC Breakfast show it was stated that public opinion was at 60%! On a previous BBC Politics Live show a few weeks ago it was claimed in a strapline that the government wants to cut wages of public service workers by not increasing their pay to match inflation, in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy! More power to the trade unionists I say, for sticking up for the workers!
If it’s on the BBC then it MUST be true! *snigger*
The same corporation predicted Remain would comfortably win, and Trump would lose. So they hardly have their fingers on the pulse.
I thought that Trump DID lose the last US election , and as for the Remain prediction surely the Beeb were just reporting what the pollsters like MORI or Gallup were feeding them ?
I’m on about the first Trump election of course, and as for Brexit, they made the same mistake as the pollsters by listening to the people of unrepresentative London rather than the majority elsewhere.
You really are a Pillock so called Concerned! Anyone going out on strike can only do this by agreement with the union membership! This Tory government is trying to force hundreds of thousands of people to take a pay cut, to pay for Tax cuts for the wealthy, according to a strap line used on BBC Politics Live a short while ago! Would you feel safe on a train that didn’t have a Guard (On Board Manager!)? I know I wouldn’t, but that is what train companies are trying to do, sack train Guards. It takes a couple of years to train a Guard, but if there are none, it will mean passengers having to deal with anti-social behaviour, and passengers with no tickets, Duurh!