
6 December 2019
RMT Press Office
RMT slams chronic mismanagement and understaffing at Scottish depots as passengers forced to suffer misery of Overhead Line failures
RAIL UNION RMT today slammed shocking levels of mismanagement and understaffing that the union says have been at the root of delays and cancellations of services out of Scotland this week.
In the wake of RMT officials raising serious concerns to Network Rail and Transport Scotland regarding the mismanagement and chronic understaffing of Overhead Line Depots in Scotland the risk taking approach has come back to bite the passengers affected by the relatively minor overhead line fault.
The problems arose due to the abject failure of management to resource this crucial department sufficiently and led to the unacceptably long delays on the West Coast Mainline on Thursday 5th December.
RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said:
“ My officials at national level and in Scotland have been raising this union’s concerns with management and Transport Scotland for some time now regarding staffing shortfalls at Overhead Line Depots in Scotland and we will once again through our Parliamentary Group at Holyrood be raising these managerial shortcomings in the Scottish Parliament.
“The fare paying passengers across Scotland deserve better than this and I call on Alex Hynes, Managing Director of Scotland’s Railway, to get a grip of this situation and put an end to the risk taking approach which has seen over 260 shifts go uncovered in the overhead line department from the middle of November to the present day.
“RMT support the electrification of Scotland’s railway and expect the appropriate numbers of trained and competent staff to be on shift to deal with all eventualities.”
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Tagged with: Scotland, Overhead Lines
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