24 May 2019
RMT Press Office:
RAIL UNION RMT said today that it is winning battles across the country in the fight to smash the pay gap imposed on rail workers by Tory Transport Secretary Chris Grayling last year.
Back in August 2018 Grayling announced to a huge fanfare that he was going to try and impose a pay norm on rail workers that would restrict pay increases to the lesser Consumer Prices Index (CPI) in a break from the higher Retail Prices Index (RPI) which includes housing costs.
This week RMT confirmed a two year pay deal for the biggest single group of rail staff, nearly 20,000 members on Network Rail, that will match the RPI figure for the next two years alongside a continuation of job protection measures.
The Network Rail workforce joins staff at train operating companies across the country who through militant and campaigning industrial trade unionism have also smashed their way through the Government pay cap outlined by Grayling.
RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said:
“In August last year Tory Transport boss Chris Grayling threw down the gauntlet to rail workers across the country. His plan was to force our members to take a hit on their pay to bail out the failing train companies while they were laughing all the way to the bank.
“RMT said at the time that we would set out to smash Grayling’s pay cap and that is exactly what we have done through the unity, determination and guts of our members who have refused to pay for the Government’s on-going rail crisis.
“For RMT this is just the start. Our fight for decent pay and working conditions right across the transport sector goes on. We are proud of what we have achieved in the teeth of a full-frontal political assault but recognise that there are still groups of workers in outsourced, casualised and under-valued pockets of the industry where the campaign for pay and workplace justice needs to be focussed.”
ENDS
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Tagged with: network rail, chris grayling, failing grayling, pay cap, cpi, rpi, tory government
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