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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Haroon Siddique , Damien Gayle , Alice Ross and Ben Quinn

Southern rail strike begins – As it happened

A picket line opposite Victoria Station in London, as hundreds of thousands of rail passengers face a week of travel chaos because of a five-day strike in an escalating dispute over the role of conductors.
A picket line opposite Victoria Station in London, as hundreds of thousands of rail passengers face a week of travel chaos because of a five-day strike in an escalating dispute over the role of conductors. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

There’s still no shortage of passion on social media where many, including commuters who have managed to make it home this evening, are continuing to vent their feelings

Updated

Representatives of the RMT and Southern have clashed on BBC London News. Angie Doll, a Southern spokesperson accused the union of being inflexible and said that an offer which the company made to the union last week was still on the table.

“Five days of industrial action is totally disproportionate for the modest changes that we want to make here. It’s making life unbearable for our passengers and the local economy and the RMT has the ability to call the strike off at any stage.”

Asked if Southern was being advised by the government, Doll said no and that any “conversations” were around the company’s own executive board. Referring to the plans for drivers, rather than conductors, to operate carriage doors, she said that this was a safe plan which would “free up” staff to provide a better service.

Paul Cox from the RMT insisted that the strike was about safety, saying: “it’s about stopping the degrading of safety on the railways. Enough is enough. No more driver led operations.”

He said that the months of disruption preceding the strike were because a “basket case” company was unable to run a functioning train service.

“That is not related to the dispute. All the evidence that is required is there. They [Southern] should have that service taken from them and the mayor should get it or go to a directly operated rail service.”

Passengers on a Southern train at Victoria Station, London.
Passengers on a Southern train at Victoria Station, London. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA

Evening commuters have been sharing their experiences, which include some images like this:

Southern has said that said its strike timetable was still running well as the evening peak approached, with no issues at stations and 88.5% of services on time.

But it added that the figure was a manual one compiled by Southern as the company was unable to rely on industry data which was showing inaccurate public performance data due to a systems error.

Summary

Hundreds of Southern Railway trains have been cancelled at the start of a five-day strike by members of the RMT. The union said the strike was “rock solid”.

Southern’s owner, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), said that 60% of its normal service was running and nine out of 10 trains on an emergency timetable ran on time. But passengers complained of packed trains. GTR apologised to commuters to passengers, describing the strike as “completely unjustified”.

The prime minister’s official spokeswoman said Theresa May “strongly condemns” the strike, but Labour claimed it was becoming increasingly clear that the government was a barrier to resolving the dispute.

Oh dear, this is a government press officer tweeting:

Stagecoach is running extra services because of the Southern Rail strike.

Channel 5 tried to conduct an interview with Southern Rail’s passenger services director Alex Foulds in Brighton but kept getting interrupted by angry commuters.

Some Southern commuters have said the weeks of disruption and delays on the network have put their jobs at risk - see, for example, Sam Gyimah MP’s letter to Govia Thameslink CEO Charles Horton last month. But is it really legal to sack someone for the misfortune of living on a failing rail line?

Yes, says employment lawyer Aye Limbin-Glassey, a partner at Shakespeare Martineau. “If an employee is regularly late to work, due to known disruptions, as has been the case for Southern Rail commuters affected by consistently poor services over the past few months, failing to find alternative travel arrangements could lead employers to take action arising from persistent lateness.”

During the strike, bosses are within their rights to discipline employees who persistently arrive late, but they do so at their peril, Limbin-Glassey says. “They should avoid jumping to conclusions as this could lead to counter-claims.” Instead, they should make it clear what employees are expected to do and offer alternatives such as working from home or shift working, to reduce the impact on their businesses. It’s also important that each employee knows who they should report to if they do experience disruption, she adds.

There’s not much employers who are left out of pocket by industrial action can do to recoup the costs, says Limbin-Glassey: instead, their focus should be on making arrangements so that there’s as little disruption to the business as possible.

The TUC leader has tweeted her support for the industrial action:

Southern’s operator and the RMT union are at loggerheads, but where is the Department for Transport in today’s headlines? Saturday’s Brighton Argus ran an eye-catching blank page highlighting its absence, saying it had “cleared the page” for transport secretary Chris Grayling to explain what actions he would be taking to resolve the mess - but answer came there none.

The Argus’s editor Mike Gilson has written an excoriating op-ed shedding light on - and throwing some serious shade at - the Department for Transport’s failure to fix things.

The full piece is here

Updated

Here are a couple more passenger accounts, as collated and curated from our call-out by my colleague Carmen Fishwick.

“Southern seem to forget that passengers are human beings”

Dan from Brighton, experienced a less-problematic journey than usual despite the strike, yet has been dismayed with the service he’s received from Southern since 2015, which he describes as “an absolute shambles”:

Southern are running eight carriage trains every half hour, and I managed to get a seat in the declassified first class.

However, it needs to be pointed out that the service that Southern have provided has been an absolute shambles since Govia took over this part of the franchise in July 2015. I have personally experienced week after week of cancellations and delays for getting on for eight months now.

The strikes are being used as a smoke screen for a poorly managed company that seems to be in bed with the DfT. Management seem to forget or wilfully ignore that their passengers are human beings having to deal with their utter incompetence.

I fully support the strike action that the RMT are taking, despite the impact to my day to day life. I have seriously considered moving away from the area so that I don’t have to deal with this on a daily basis, and my journey in is only supposed to take twenty minutes a day.

“It’s not the RMT’s place to say what is safe and what isn’t”

Richard travels between Crawley and London, and his usual 40 minute journey took one hour and fifty minutes. He has mixed feelings about the service, but doesn’t believe that Southern Rail should be immediately removed. Instead he saves his anger for the RMT:

Nightmare etting into work today, however the strike service that southern rail are running is able to get people to work, albeit a bit late. Well done Southern Rail.

I will leave work early today, as during the last strike action I was left stranded in London.

People need to stop calling on Southern Rail to be removed. They are trying to modernise their service, the RMT seem to want to keep things exactly as they are, they are not interested in innovation or the enhancement of services through technology. They are the ones causing a nightmare for commuters. Why don’t we let Southern go ahead with their plans and if the service is still poor, then look at removing them.

It is not the RMT’s place to say what they think is safe and what isn’t. We have rail regulators for that. Southern Rail have been given permission to make these staff contract changes, and should be allowed to do so.

Updated

It appears that Labour and the Lib Dems are lining up behind the RMT in their responses to the Southern rail strike, according to comments obtained from the parties by my colleague Alice Ross.

Andy McDonald, Labour’s shadow transport secretary, said:

Last week Govia Thameslink Railway GTR rejected the RMT’s offer to settle a dispute over conductors’ roles on the same basis that a similar dispute was settled earlier in the week at ScotRail. It has become increasingly clear that the barrier to resolving the Southern-GTR dispute is the Tory Government.

The basis for an agreement is there and both sides need to get back round the table – and that’s why it’s extremely concerning that a senior civil servant from the Department for Transport is on the record as saying that the Department wants to ‘break’ rail employees and make them ‘get the hell out of my industry’.

The country’s biggest rail franchise is failing. Passengers are enduring the worst delays in the country, fares are up 25%, and promised investment looks further away than ever, yet Chris Grayling and his officials seem more interested in pursuing an ideological dust-up with rail unions than improving abysmal passenger services.

We have a train operating company unable to make their trains run on time and a Government prioritising a battle with trade unions over fixing a failing franchise, and it is the tens of thousands of passengers having to endure miserable services who are paying the price.

The comments mentioned by McDonald appear to be from a Private Eye story quoting a senior Department for Transport official, Peter Wilkinson. That story, like much of Private Eye’s content, doesn’t appear to be online, but the Inside Croydon blog has written about it. Wilkinson, who is the DfT’s managing director of passenger services, is quoted as saying of the strike: “I’m furious about it and it has got to change – we have got to break them.”

Meanwhile, Jenny Randerson, Liberal Democrat Transport spokesperson, has said accused the government of turning a blind eye to customers’ ordeals. She said:

The situation with Southern is a total mess. People are being left completely stranded. Some even lost jobs before the strikes because of the poor service, whilst home life is being ruined.

As a member of the Cabinet, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has constituents being directly affected in Hastings and can only criticise the unions; the Government has to take control of this situation. It has the power to impose terms and conditions on franchises and is turning a blind eye to the suffering of high paying customers.

As ever, Twitter has proven a popular forum for commuters who want to vent their frustration at the service provided by Southern rail during the first day of this week’s strike action.

According to media monitors Visibrain, there were more than 12,670 tweets mentioning Southern Rail by about 2pm this afternoon, while the hashtag #southernstrike had been used 3,815 times.

The only surprising statistic is that there had only been 560 tweets in support of the strike. This didn’t seem to tally with the number that I’d seen scrolling by as I scanned the hashtag, so I asked Visibrain why they had registered so few. Georgina Parsons, head of UK communications at Visibrain, told me:

We obtained this statistic by filtering on all tweets containing the words “solidarity”, “support”, “supporting”, “stand with”, or “behind”. This number does not take into account more neutral tweets.

We chose this method over a classic sentiment analysis because in cases such as this where a lot of irony is being used, sentiment analysis is not reliable.

For example, the most shared tweet of the day so far is this one from David Schneider:

Although the wording of the message is positive and would register as positive sentiment such in a classic analysis, the tone is ironic.

Carmen Fishwick has been speaking to Southern rail commuters about how their journey, and lives, have been affected by the strike. For many it is the culmination of months of poor service from the operator.

“On my line 100% of trains were cancelled”

Simon Foulkes travels on the Southern service between Appledore to Ashford to access the high speed service to London. He said:

When Southern say they have reduced trains in an amended timetable to 80% service, on my line the number of trains in commuting periods was reduced by 50%. When they say the strike will cut 40% of services, on my line 100% of trains are cancelled.

My local MP took weeks to respond to me on the issue, ignored several follow up emails, and declines to meet me in Westminster where I work. I’d like to see the Tory MPs whose constituents are affected by this issue acting together to cut through the intransigence, and to address the background fact that the DfT is driving the dispute.

“People were stood on the toilets just to have space to stand”

A commuter from Lewes, who asked to remain anonymous, reports months of delays and cancellations. He is worried about the impact this is having on his job:

I wanted to get into the office today for some important meetings, and having started my job relatively recently not wanting to have the strike disrupt the progress I’ve made. For all employers can be sympathetic there is a responsibility for employees to ensure they can get to work too. In my 14 weeks in this job this is the third extended strike, which on top of the regular cancellations and delays could easily be giving people the impression I’m unreliable.

The only way for me to get to work on time was to catch a bus at my own expense to Brighton, and catch an over-crowded train from there, changing twice. What is normally a journey of an hour taking me twice as long. Already I’ve had to cancel a meeting later this week because changes to the bus service mean I can’t get to Brighton at a time where I can get a train getting me to London before 8.30. Relying on public transport has become impossible.

This is all on top of months of delays, cancellations and short formed trains. One day last week we had a 12 coach train reduced to 4 coaches. People were stood on the toilets with others crammed into the cubicle around them just to have space to stand. This is without the air conditioning working properly too. The week before that a woman collapsed on the train and I’ve seen people get off early en-route overcome with the heat and crowding.

Updated

Anger at Southern Rail is still simmering as we await the next bout of commuter chaos, forecast for home-time rush hour today. Here is a selection of some of the pithier tweets targeted at the rail operator’s Twitter account.

Business is not happy with the RMT strike. David Leam – infrastructure director at London First, a lobby group for the capital’s businesses – has used an article in the Telegraph to describe the conductors’ withdrawal of their labour as “ludicrous, shameless and wrong”. He writes:

The underlying issue here is the prevalence of outdated working practices, which contribute to the high-cost culture of Britain’s railways. While Britain’s railways have been tremendously successful in attracting new passengers they have been much less so at improving their efficiency. Government studies have identified a 40% efficiency gap when comparing our railway against other European countries, requiring passengers and taxpayers to pick up the bill.

Reviewing the various assurances and commitments made to the workforce by the train operator and government dispels any notion that the employer is being too hot-headed. Rather it raises the question whether government is, in fact, being too timid. Is it really sustainable to go so far in addressing the concerns of a party that appears dead set against a reasonable negotiated outcome?

Workers in all walks of life need to adapt and change as new technologies emerge. Modern trains no more need a guard to close doors than they need a fireman to shovel coal or be preceded by a man with a red flag to alert fearful passersby. The RMT should stop pretending that the railway is somehow different and put an end to this damaging and ludicrous dispute.

Updated

A scan of the most popular Southern rail strike-related hashtags shows plenty of tweets backing the RMT’s industrial action, or at least condemning Southern Rail for the service it provides to travellers.

Updated

The RMT has issued a statement condemning what it dubs “lies and smears” over the strike ballot, which have apparently appeared in a number of reports this morning, including the influential Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

According to the union, 81% of 393 eligible members took part in the vote, with 306 – 77% – voting in favour of strike action. “These numbers easily outstrip the hurdles proposed for union ballots by the Tory right in terms of both turnout and the majority in favour of action,” the union says.

The statement quotes general secretary, Mick Cash, as saying:

We are appalled that the BBC’s flagship radio news programme is recycling the lies and smears about our ballot. The turnout was over 80% and 77% of our total membership voted yes. That is a mandate the politicians could only dream of and to try and pretend that only a minority back the action as the BBC have this morning is disgraceful and shoddy journalism.

A complaint has been lodged. It’s interesting that no one ever challenges the mandate of the unelected and unaccountable GTR [Govia Thameslink Railway] bosses who have unleashed havoc on their passengers for months.

Updated

The skilful video editors on the Guardian’s news desk have done up my interviews with Mick Cash, the RMT general secretary, and Paul Cox, the union’s south-east regional organiser, into a lovely package. They say the strike is all about the safety of passengers, and Cox adds that he believes it is time that the Southern franchise is handed to a new operator.

RMT officials talk about the Southern rail strike

London Mayor calls for TfL takeover of Southern

Transport for London executives should take charge of the Southern franchise to fix the problems that have blighted journeys, the Mayor of London’s office has said. In a statement sent to the Guardian, a spokesperson for Sadiq Khan said:

Thousands of Londoners and longer-distance commuters are facing further disruption as a result of this strike action. The government should accept Sadiq’s offer of putting a senior team from TfL in charge of the GTR Southern franchise until we get a permanent resolution.

Updated

(Correction: It has been brought to our attention that this picture was not taken this morning. The image is just being used as a general illustration.)

Commuters travelling in from Brighton and Sussex have borne much of the brunt of the strike action. This picture, tweeted early this morning, captures the scene as hundreds queued to get aboard the train to London.

Updated

Theresa May has condemned the Southern strike, according to this tweet by BBC political correspondent Chris Mason.

Of course, it’s hardly a surprise that the prime minister, who as home secretary expressed her desire to repeal the Human Rights Act, is no fan of workers’ rights either.

Updated

The bookies are backing another strike on Southern Rail before the end of the year. According to Lee Price, PR & “mischief champion” at Paddy Power:

Incredibly, we make it ODDS-ON that there’s another 5+ day strike this year by Southern Rail.

A 2+ day strike is a whopping 1/20 on for this year.

While the odds on the 0729 Brighton to London service never leaving on time next year is just 7/2.

Oh dear!

Updated

Another commuter belt MP weighs in: this time it’s justice minister Sam Gyimah, whose East Surrey constituency is firmly in Southern’s territory.

Last month Gyimah wrote to Charles Horton, CEO of Southern franchise-holder Govia Thameslink, criticising the “intransigence of both parties”. He says some of his constituents tell him their jobs are at risk because of the endemic delays to the service.

Hat-tip to Isabel Togoh for pointing this out.

A few tweets from Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP for Tonbridge, Edenbridge and Malling:

Here’s a blog post from last month in which Tugendhat lays into Southern in no uncertain terms:

Govia Thameslink is clearly incapable of running a major rail franchise, and I would like to see it stripped of the Southern franchise immediately.

I, and other residents in Tonbridge, Edenbridge and surrounding villages are fed up with the appalling service which is prevalent across its network. Jobs are at risk as a result of employees being consistently late to work, children are behind in their education due to arriving at school late and families cannot plan from one day to the next.

Our third diarist, Huw Merriman MP, is not commuting in to London during the parliamentary recess, but is attempting to make a journey across his constituency by public transport today when Southern have cancelled all services on several branch lines.

He is recording a video diary of the ongoing journey from Bexhill to Eastbourne for a meeting, and on to Brighton, with not even a replacement bus on offer from the train operator.

Updated

With the morning rush hour over, it seems commuter chaos has not quite occurred – at least in London. As our passenger diaries show, people have had their journeys messed up but have attempted to plan around the disruptions, and my colleague on the frontline, Damien Gayle, reports that Victoria station is quieter than usual.

The fact that the strike is happening in the middle of the summer holidays may have helped.

But months of delays and cancellations have created a sense of solidarity among many Southern passengers, who have been venting their frustrations on Twitter at #southernfail. The disruptions have also given rise to a passenger campaign group, the Association of British Commuters (they’re on Facebook here), which organised the protest welcoming would-be travellers to “commuter hell” at Victoria last month.

Let’s see how the evening rush-hour unfolds...

Updated

RMT organiser Paul Cox is calling for Southern to be removed from the franchise, as he speaks to Damien Gayle on the picket line:

Meanwhile Southern Rail’s Twitter feed says the strike is “unjustified”:

Updated

Damien Gayle has spoken to the RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, on the picket line at Victoria station:

Updated

Whether you’re striking or your commute has been affected we’d like to hear from you. You can share your photos and stories by clicking on the ‘Contribute’ button in the live blog.

You can also fill in our form or contact us on WhatsApp on +447867825056.

We’ll include some of your submissions in the live blog and in our reporting.

We asked several Southern commuters to record a diary of their journeys to work when the company first instigated its emergency timetable last month.

Two of them have provided updates today:

Jonathan Ricketts, 34, Reigate

When I went to bed I checked the national rail app, which said there was a train at 06:48. Wake up early and see that it is not running. Go back to bed for a bit wake up to feed baby and then head for the 07:11 from Redhill to Victoria. Wait for 07:11 with friend from Earlswood as there are no trains from this station all week.

07:11 is absolutely packed, have one free hand to write. A couple travelling in together are split as one gets on but the other can’t fit on. Thirty-eight minutes is going to feel a very, very long time before I get off. Worse than a normal strike day (been three so far) as people can’t work from home as five days of it. A lot more busy than usual. Rumours that last train home is 18:35 so best check throughout the day.

Kate Hayes, 55, from Nutfield

As the Tonbridge line is shut completely during the strike this week, I rely on my husband to get me to Redhill.

0648 from Redhill to Victoria disappeared off the app overnight so husband got an extra 30 mins in bed. Drove me to Redhill where I caught the 0720 (pretty well on time), busy but not overly crowded. No seat though - but am lucky enough to get one at East Croydon.

0752: I am being held at Clapham Junction - stuck behind a train in front which has an “’issue”. People getting off if they can use Waterloo or “if they are in a hurry”! The train in front is apparently broken down, so now all of us are told to get off - and now stay on...! I arrive late but pathetically grateful in Victoria.

Updated

A couple of photos from Victoria station as the strike gets under way:

Would-be passengers scan the departure boards at Victoria station as Southern Rail’s five-day strike threatens huge disruptions to services. Credit: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire
Would-be passengers scan the departure boards at Victoria station as Southern Rail’s five-day strike threatens huge disruptions to services. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA
Striking Southern Rail staff on the picket line outside Victoria station.
Striking Southern Rail staff on the picket line outside Victoria station. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

The BBC is describing this as the “longest rail strike since 1968” – nearly 50 years.

Updated

Striking staff from the RMT union have been handing out leaflets on the picket line at Victoria station explaining why they are striking – and Damien Gayle has got his hands on one.

The RMT says Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), which runs the Southern franchise, is putting passenger safety at risk with its plans to remove conductors from trains.

Updated

It seems the strike has actually improved things for at least one lucky commuter:

My colleague Damien Gayle is on the frontlines of the Southern strike:

Updated

The Reigate, Redhill and District Rail Users’ Association is placing the blame squarely on the RMT. They’ve released a statement:

The RMT leadership shows utter contempt to the rail users by ruining their daily lives for the honour of pushing a button to close train doors...

Last trains this week to Redhill are around 7pm, meaning that commuters and visitors alike have little choice but to cut their day short in London. GTR Southern and Thameslink will still be running 8 trains per hour to Gatwick straight through Redhill but are unable to plan a service to stop at Redhill.

This is the group that last month bought an ad in the Times modelled on the famous Conservative “Labour isn’t working” poster, with the slogan: “Southern rail isn’t working” and pleading with the government, the RMT and Govia Thameslink to resolve the problems.

Updated

Victoria Station, Southern’s main terminus, was quieter than usual on Monday morning. Just a few hundred commuters stood waiting as the tannoy announced cancellation after cancellation “due to a shortage of train crew”.

“Southern are sorry for the delay this will cause to your journey,” the plum-voiced announcer said unconvincingly (and ungrammatically) each time.

The 7.54 from Brighton arrived six minutes late and vomited hundreds of disgruntled looking commuters on to the concourse. Grim-faced, they streamed through the barriers at top speed.

Steve Mansfield was hurrying to work after catching the train from Haywards Heath. “There’s nothing to London Bridge so I’m here,” he said. “It’s another half-hour at least... we’re all absolutely bloody fed up with it to the back teeth.”

Brandishing his travel card, he added: “It’s a bargain for three and a half thousand quid or whatever.”

Memi Galiatsatou, a treasury analyst from Worthing, said: “I had to take the bus to get to Brighton. I paid £7 for a return ticket on top of my normal fare. It’s ridiculous.”

Asked about the ongoing industrial dispute, she said: “I think it’s ridiculous. It’s been two and a half months now. It’s getting out of hand. Someone has to do something about it.”

Martin Simms said he was forced to stand all the way from Three Bridges, Sussex, on his journey into Victoria. He said unions and management had performed poorly, adding: “they shouldn’t inconvenience the public as much as they have done. It’s taken too long. We are suffering.”

Updated

The RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, is blaming Govia Thameslink (GTR), Southern’s franchise operator, and the government for this week’s strike.

He said: “The strike action this morning is rock solid across the Southern rail network as we fight to put rail safety before the profits of the failed Govia Thameslink operation.

“This action has been forced on us by the arrogance and inaction of Govia Thameslink and the government, who have made it clear that they have no interest in resolving this dispute or in tackling the daily chaos on Southern.”

On Friday, RMT offered to cancel the strike if GTR would match a compromise the union reached with ScotRail. “They kicked that back in our faces,” he said.

“We share the anger and frustration of passengers and we cannot sit back while jobs and safety are compromised on these dangerously overcrowded trains.”

Updated

Southern rail’s CEO, Charles Horton, has been on the Today programme this morning saying he is “deeply sorry for the disruption to people’s lives” caused by the industrial action.

The RMT were “not prepared to compromise” despite three days’ mediation last week, he said.

Horton explained that Southern had offered the RMT a guarantee that where services currently have a conductor, it would commit to always having a second member of staff in addition to the driver, except occasionally in “disrupted circumstances”. But the RMT rejected this, which he said was due to the union’s “intransigence”.

“What the RMT are insisting on is that the control of the doors remains with the conductor, whereas we want to transfer that responsibility for controlling the doors to the driver,” he said.

Updated

Commuter misery looms for thousands in the south-east, as a five-day strike hits the troubled Southern rail franchise.

A bitter dispute between Southern’s operator, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union over plans to change the role of conductors and other job changes has led to the walkout, after talks at the mediation service Acas collapsed.

The service has been in the headlines for months as industrial action and staff shortages have hit services, exacerbating Southern’s persistent delays and cancellations, as well as overcrowding on the remaining trains. Last month Southern cancelled hundreds of services each day in an attempt to improve reliability on the remaining routes, while MPs on the transport committee summoned union bosses and GTR management to question them on the chaos.

Southern announced its emergency timetable will include 60% of its normal services this week, although some areas of Sussex will have no trains at all. The BBC has a useful summary of the services that will be worst hit.

RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, said Southern is in “total meltdown” and the company’s plans to change the role of conductors risks passenger safety.

He said: “This action has been forced on us by the arrogance and inaction of Govia Thameslink and the government, who have made it clear that they have no interest in resolving this dispute or in tackling the daily chaos on Southern.”

GTR’s Angie Doll said the strike is “unnecessary, unacceptable and unjustified”, adding: “We have gone the extra mile with our compromise offer, but the RMT has made it clear they are not prepared to negotiate. They did not want to discuss the role of the onboard supervisor and remain rigidly opposed to evolving the role of onboard staff to focus more on customers.”

We’ll be following the strike as it unfolds this morning.

Updated

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