2019-11-30 Rail fares for 2020 published – fares held below inflation for third year running as record investment continues (Rail Delivery Group)

2019-11-30 Train fare rise shameful highway robbery – Cortes (TSSA)

_______________________________________________________________

date 4 December 2019
source South Western Railway
type Letter

Mr. M Cash,
General Secretary RMT,
Unity House,
39 Chalton Street
London
NW1 1JD

4 December 2019

Dear Mick,

ROLE OF THE GUARD & EXTENSION OF DOO – SOUTH WESTERN RAILWAY

I write further to your letter of 4 December.

We’re pleased that the RMT wants to come back to the table, but we need guarantees that you are serious about ending these strikes in a way that works for passengers.

To show that you are serious, the RMT should:

1. Explain exactly where you stand – you took a written agreement away from ACAS last Thursday. Why did your National Executive Committee reject it, and what do they want instead?

2. Offer a new solution – if the RMT has new alternative ways of safely delivering over 10m more peak-time passenger journeys on-time every year, you need to set these out. Our focus is making sure our new trains leave every station on-time, every-time and the proposal agreed last Thursday enabled that in a way that, as you know, the independent Rail Safety & Standards Board (RSSB) has confirmed is at least as safe as our current train operation. Every second at every station counts on a network as busy as ours, where stops on our suburban routes can be every two minutes and routes include a large number of stops.

Our position is still that:

We want a guard on every train – and they should have a safety critical role. We know how important our guards are, because almost every day passengers tell us about the great job they do. We want to enable guards to spend more time helping people in wheelchairs and with buggies get on and off the train, walking up and down all the carriages and ensuring the safety of passengers at times of need. The RMT’s current approach stops guards traveling the full length of the train and doing as much of this as we and guards would want.

So we absolutely welcome further talks, provided the RMT show they are serious about ending the dispute, in a way that is in the best interests of passengers.

Yours sincerely,
Andy Mellors
Managing Director

Railhub Archive ::: 2019-12-04 SWR-001