
Please help to staff our stations.
PLEASE WRITE TO YOUR MP
COMPLAIN TO AVANTI
There is a chronic shortage of staff at railway station ticket offices across the West Coast mainline as any passenger will be acutely aware.
Train operator Avanti is refusing to fill these vacant posts which means ongoing misery for station users and staff alike.
Our ticket offices nationally were saved from closure recently after RMT – with mass support from the travelling public – successfully led a popular campaign to keep them open. The campaign highlighted that passengers lose out on accessibility, safety and advice without ticket offices.
During that time Avanti maintained a strategy not to fill jobs where staff had retired, left their post or taken voluntary redundancy (with the encouragement of the company) as they fully expected to close all their ticket offices soon. The fallout from these staffing cuts is that on many occasions station ticket offices on the West Coast mainline are now closed when the advertised hours state that they should be open.
And when they are open huge queues often form as the depleted numbers of staff struggle to cope with demand. The stress has led to increased staff sickness, which only compounds the problem.
Now that ticket offices have been saved from closure by popular demand Avanti should be rebuilding staffing levels. Instead, they are proposing a rostering review to make the current staff shortages permanent with cuts to jobs at several stations including Birmingham New Street, Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston.
RMT is mounting a campaign to fight these cuts. Passengers and staff deserve better!
We hope you can support us by making a complaint to Avanti and backing our campaign as it develops.