Train drivers’ union Aslef is recommending its members accept a three-year pay offer it received from the Department for Transport (DfT) yesterday, potentially bringing an end to two years of industrial action in England.
If its members – who comprise 96% of train drivers across 16 train operating companies – accept the pay offer, it will end a dispute which has seen drivers take 18 days of strike action and refuse to work non-contractual overtime.
Mick Whelan, Aslef general secretary, emerged from negotiations at the DfT to say: “We are pleased that after being treated with utter contempt for the last two years by the privatised train companies, and the previous government that was pulling their strings, we finally have a new government – a Labour government – that listens and wants to make the railway work for staff, for passengers, and for the taxpayer.
Train drivers pay offer
“The offer is a good offer – a fair offer – and it is what we have always asked for, a clean offer, without a land grab for our terms and conditions that the companies, and previous government, tried to take in April last year.
“We will put it to members with a recommendation for them to accept.”
The “no-strings” train drivers pay offer is for 5% for 2022-2023, 4.75% for 2023-2024, and 4.5% for 2024-2025. The pay, which amounts to a 14.94% settlement, would be backdated and pensionable. Train drivers have not received a pay increase for five years.
Transport secretary Louise Haigh said the breakthrough shows how the government was “putting passengers first”.
She added: “When I took this job, I said I wanted to move fast and fix things – starting by bringing an end to rail strikes. Finally today the end is in sight.
“If accepted, this offer would finally bring an end to this long-running dispute and allow us to move forward by driving up performance for passengers with the biggest overhaul to our railways in a generation.”
Whelan added: “We have achieved more in the last four weeks of a Labour government than we managed under a Tory government that set out to destroy us – first by refusing to meet us, then by insisting the companies could only offer us 2%, then by offering us 4% but with a land grab for all the Ts & Cs we have spent 144 years negotiating with productivity and sweat.”
Aslef first balloted for industrial action in June 2022 and renewed its mandates, both for strike action and for action short of a strike, every six months. It held 14 national one-day strikes, followed by rolling strikes at different train operating companies between December 2023 and May this year. There have also been frequent overtime bans, where drivers have refused to work “rest days”.
The DfT this week estimated that revenue lost to the strikes had cost the taxpayer around £850 million.
Helen Whately, the shadow transport secretary, said the “no-strings” train drivers pay offer means it would be paid for by passengers and taxpayers.
She said: “We have to make our railways more efficient but instead, Labour has just caved to the unions. Ditching working practice reforms leaves a hole in the finances that can only be filled by higher fares or higher taxes.”
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