{"id":59684,"date":"2019-01-24T12:20:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T12:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/?p=59684"},"modified":"2019-01-24T12:20:09","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T12:20:09","slug":"northern-rail-announces-month-of-planned-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/2019\/01\/24\/northern-rail-announces-month-of-planned-strikes\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Rail announces month of planned strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The RMT Union confirmed last weekend a new set of strikes which will mean that in addition to the planned walk-out this Saturday, there will also be action on February 2, February 9 and February 16.<\/p>\n

Northern Rail passengers have now deemed themselves \u201cfed up\u201d after forty-five days of strikes over the past six months, combined with engineering works, after “the usual” announcement that timetables are being slashed by two-thirds, with only a few services being ran after 5PM this weekend.<\/p>\n

The Mancunion <\/em>reported last year<\/a> that staff at Northern Rail were implementing walk-outs until 29th December, although the dispute continues over the role of guards on trains. Not much progress has been made since the ongoing stand-off between the operators and the union.<\/p>\n

Since the strikes, over-crowding on Northern trains has become more of a problem, with Northern issuing a statement that suggests journey disruptions around Greater Manchester will \u2018last until at least next May\u2019.<\/p>\n

Since October the number of trains lacking carriages has almost tripled, and with the bad weather on the way it can only expect to get worse. Raj Chandarana, a stakeholder manager, had already blamed the planned works and “autumnal weather”, which leads to “wheel flats”, last year at a public meeting in Manchester and promised only “incremental” change in 2019, which seems to already be getting off to a wrong start.<\/p>\n

David Brown, managing director for Northern, speaking to The Manchester Evening News<\/em>, has said: \u201cThere is no reason for RMT to continue their ‘needless’ strike action.<\/p>\n

“The Department for Transport and Transport for the North have guaranteed that all current conductors will continue to work in modernised on-board roles on all trains to provide customer service.<\/p>\n

“This will include helping customers with accessibility, personal security, ticketing and information.<\/p>\n

“Customer groups and business groups have supported Northern\u2019s call for RMT to take part in an independent inquiry on Northern\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n

“This inquiry would be held by ACAS with an independent chair and independent panel and would give all parties the chance to have their say.”<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Network Rail has said extra staff would be present at Piccadilly this weekend to help passengers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RMT strikers announce new set of dates that will last a month, affecting journeys to and from Manchester, leaving passengers “fed up”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1760,"featured_media":59686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,23179,346,514,18753,8354,1042,2127],"coauthors":[21635],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1760"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59684"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=59684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}