Christmas travel chaos made worse by train staff pay rise, transport secretary says

20 December 2024, 15:14

The government’s pay rise for rail staff who now have less need to work overtime has worsened travel chaos for commuters this Christmas, the transport secretary has said.

Heidi Alexander has said a chunk of cash that went straight into the bank accounts of drivers in recent months has meant they “don’t feel the need to be working on the Sunday”.

She claimed that they have also been turning down and extra shifts over the festive period.

It comes after train staff accepted a 5% backdated pay rise for 2022-23.

They also received a 4.75% for 2023-24, and a 4.5% surge for 2024-25.

Drivers’ union Aslef said the offer amounted to a 15% pay hike altogether.

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Watch again: Heidi Alexander joins Nick Ferrari

The deal had no requirement for weekend work. A lack of train divers means rest-day working is vital for keeping scheduled services running on time.

Mrs Alexander has said that she wants to “reduce our reliance” on overtime, which is not written into existing contracts for many railway staff, although this varies widely from company to company.

Mrs Alexander said she wants to have “a mature conversation” with trade unions about setting up more Sunday shifts for staff to ease travel disruption.

Last week, a report in The Times revealed the industry’s concerns that the pay deal had led to drivers turning down extra shifts as Christmas approaches.

Ms Alexander told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday: “What happened this year is because the pay deal spanned three years, there was some back payment.

“And anecdotally, some of the things that I’m hearing is that because there was that lump sum, which was a back payment, some drivers and train crew are saying, ‘actually, we don’t feel the need to be working on the Sunday’ in the same way as they would have done previously.”

She added that it is “not going to be a problem next year because the back pay only happens once”.

Earlier this month, Ms Alexander told LBC she did not know the cost of bringing some rail services back into public ownership would be.

It came after she announced that South Western Railway will become the first train line to be transferred into public ownership next year.

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC about its costs, Ms Alexander said: “So it will be a fraction of the costs, for example – to bring them over and also sort of set up Great British Railways – a fraction of what we’re paying in terms of the management fees.

“At the moment, we pay roughly about £150 million pounds in management fees to the train operating companies.”