Rail union backs strikes in fight for national rate

Britain faces a wave of nationwide strikes by train drivers for the first time since 1995 as part of their battle to return to national pay bargaining.

Leaders of the train drivers' union Aslef said yesterday that if there was no agreement to reintroduce central wage negotiations by May, their 17,000 members would be balloted on industrial action.

The strikes, which are also aimed at achieving increases of up to 25 per cent for the lowest paid, would bring the system to a standstill and present an even more formidable challenge to the Government than the firefighters' dispute.

Privatised train operators are supposed to run separate wage negotiations, but to the anger of Aslef the Government's Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) has been intervening to keep settlements down. Train drivers' leaders have asked for talks with the authority, but have been rebuffed.

Mick Rix, general secretary of Aslef, which has campaigned since privatisation for a return to national negotiations, said: "Fragmentation of bargaining on pay and conditions has led to massive disparities, which have, in turn, caused serious driver shortages in many parts of the country.''

Mr Rix, who is standing for re-election this spring, said the union was also deeply concerned at different standards on equality issues between train companies. "A return to orderly national bargaining would be good news for passengers, the industry and those who work in it," he said.

There were 36 different rates of pay, with express drivers on up to £36,000 a year and their colleagues at regional companies on as little as £23,000. Instead, he said, there should be four national rates for drivers working for regional, intercity, freight, and London and south-east companies. In five years' time Aslef wants to see the establishment of a single rate, but with premiums for drivers with some companies.

Mr Rix said the argument was not simply about pay. The union also wanted a return to national standards on safety, training and recruitment. Of the 3,500 drivers recruited over the past two years, only 1.5 per cent were women – at a time when 2 per cent of Aslef membership was female, he said. Standards of equality had "slipped back'' from a base that was already very low.

Racism and sexism was endemic in the industry, Mr Rix said. "Twenty years after the Brixton riots, high unemployment still exists in black areas because there are no positive recruitment policies."

A spokesman for the SRA said: "Mick Rix is interested in increasing his own power base and nothing else. Passengers are concerned with reliability and results, not ancient political rhetoric." The authority had a statutory responsibility to ensure wages were set at "reasonable" levels at franchises with less than a year to run so there was "no poisoned legacy'' for incoming companies.

A spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said individual operators knew their staffing needs and therefore the optimum pay rates required in their own areas. "To remove all that would not be helpful," he said.