SCOTRAIL’S temporary timetable of reduced services is set to continue after train drivers rejected the organisation’s latest pay offer to drivers.
Drivers are currently refusing to work rest-days amid a pay dispute – leading to ScotRail slashing hundreds of services in order to provide more “certainty” for passengers.
While new drivers are going through the training process, train drivers’ union Aslef has been at the negotiating table trying to get an improved pay deal for members.
On Wednesday afternoon it emerged that the union had turned down the 4.2% pay offer from the newly nationalised ScotRail. It will now ballot for strike action unless ScotRail comes back to the table.
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Kevin Lindsay, Aslef’s Scottish organiser, said: “Aslef wants to negotiate a fair deal for our members, we are once again calling on ScotRail to return to the talks, so we can negotiate a fair pay offer that we can put to our members.”
On Tuesday, Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth refused to say whether contingency plans are in place if drivers rejected the latest pay offer.
She said she believed ScotRail had made a “good offer”, despite inflation being expected to reach 10%, and that getting a resolution was “absolutely essential”.
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In the chamber, Tory MSP Graham Simpson asked: “So there are no contingency plans then?
“Even if Aslef recommends that members accept the deal tomorrow, it will take three weeks to ballot them – that’s nearly a month of disruption to start with.
“It was carnage on the railways at the weekend. On Sunday, 320 services were cancelled and there may be more this Sunday.
“We’re in this mess because drivers don’t want to work their rest days – and why should they?”
He also asked Gilruth when the Scottish Government was going to deliver “stability” to Scotland’s railways.
Gilruth told Labour’s Mark Griffin she was not going to “shy away” from some of the “very real challenges” faced by travellers.
The transport minister said ScotRail was also meeting with the RMT to discuss pay, saying the union was involved in a separate dispute with Network Rail.
She said she had written to her UK Government counterpart, Grant Shapps, setting out her opposition to any moves which would “diminish rail safety”.
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