RMT warns East Midlands Railway

RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch said

"East Midlands Railway are once again demonstrating safety for its passengers and staff are of little concern as it repeats the mistakes this Bank Holiday weekend of the St Pancras overcrowding and lack of social distancing from December last year all across its network.

"Either through incompetence or a safety culture coming a distant second to the culture of corporate greed, trains across the network are being reported as over capacity with zero social distancing.

" With the scientific evidence indicating the India variant of COVID shows the infection rate growing exponentially, and Leicester a key city where infection rates are of serious concern EMR have not taken a single measure or carried out a single risk assessment to ensure their trains don’t aid the transmission of the virus nationally or to safeguard their passengers or staff.

" Toilets with hand washing facilities out of order, trains running short formed with reduced capacity and others cancelled altogether due to a refusal to pay overtime to staff who have offered to alleviate the problem. That added to the failure to train large volumes staff on new fleets of trains, it appears that the failures of GTR, and Northern are going to look like a minor bump in the road as EMR plunges to the bottom of the performance and punctuality table running what few trains remain dangerously overcrowded.

"All whilst Senior Management switch off their phones and sit back sipping a cocktail this Bank Holiday weekend, patting themselves on the back for a job well done while leaving the overworked frontline staff to deal with the fallout from their absence of leadership."