Virgin Trains East Coast workers to stage 24 hour strike

The RMT union has confirmed that Virgin Trains East Coast workers will stage a 24 hour strike on Monday 3 October.

The move is in response to unresolved issues over a ‘threat to jobs, working conditions and safety’, with RMT warning that nearly 200 jobs across the franchise are at risk due to cuts.

The union has also accused Virgin Trains of ignoring the agreed negotiating machinery and ‘subjected staff to a barrage of direct propaganda justifying their attempts to bulldoze through a package of cash-led measure that would decimate jobs, working conditions and threaten the safety regime that currently ensures a guard on every train’.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: "RMT will not sit back while nearly 200 members' jobs are under threat and while conditions and safety are put at risk by a franchise which is clearly in financial trouble. We will also not tolerate the cavalier attitude to safety that is now on show as the company mobilises its scab army of managers.

“The union suspended an earlier programme of action when it looked like serious progress was being made in talks but that process has now failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion and we are back into industrial action as a result. We have been shocked at the way the company have led us up the garden path when we entered talks in good faith. Our representatives are rightly angry at this cavalier approach.”