Saturday’s train strike: how bad will services be across the UK?
theguardian.comTrain services across Britain will be massively disrupted on Saturday by the latest 24-hour strike by rail unions.
This will be the most disruptive rail strike yet this year. Only about 11% of services will run, and there will be no direct trains from London to a number of cities, including Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Newcastle, Brighton and Norwich.
Ultimately, pay: many rail staff have not had a pay rise in three years, having kept services running during the pandemic, and now inflation is eroding their wages fast. However, the train operators under contract to the government have been told to limit increases due to the sharp decline in rail passenger revenue, while Network Rail also says rises must be paid for by workplace “modernisation”.
This is the first time that a number of unions have combined action on the same day – in particular, the train drivers in the Aslef union and the Network Rail signallers in the RMT union, who are critical in keeping services running. Some members of the TSSA and Unite unions are also on strike. While the rail industry says thousands of back-up staff will work, it cannot replace drivers nor all of the signallers.
Services in most companies where Aslef drivers are in dispute, which is virtually of them.
No trains at all will run on Avanti West Coast, Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, London Overground, Northern, Southeastern, and West Midlands Railway.
A handful of services will be run by the remaining operators where Aslef has called a strike: Greater Anglia, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, LNER and TransPennine Express.
Beyond those firms, the strike by signallers predominantly affects smaller lines – wiping out rail transport across much of rural England, Scotland and
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