The 40,000-strong National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) said on Wednesday that it would hold a ballot to strike over job cuts and pay freezes in the government-owned rail infrastructure company Network Rail, and called it "potentially the biggest rail strike in modern history" of the United Kingdom
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th April, 2022) The 40,000-strong National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) said on Wednesday that it would hold a ballot to strike over job cuts and pay freezes in the government-owned rail infrastructure company Network Rail, and called it "potentially the biggest rail strike in modern history" of the United Kingdom.
"Railway workers have had to contend with pay freezes, the prospect of losing their jobs and repeated attacks on their terms and conditions," the RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, said in a press release.
The RMT statement said that Network Rail announced plans to lay off 2,500 maintenance jobs as part of business streamlining, a decision the union views as a severe blow to railroad safety.
According to the RMT, the ballot will open on April 26 and close on May 24, making it possible to start industrial action in June.
This is another instance of unions fighting for salary increases across the United Kingdom, largely due to the soaring rate of inflation in the country, which hit 7% in March 2022 (from 2000 to 2021 the highest annual inflation rate in the UK stood at 4.5%). On Tuesday, the Communication Workers Union announced that post office employees will hold a one-day strike on May 3, while on Wednesday, Unite the Union announced that its members, employed by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, voted to strike for the first time since the company's founding in 2000.
