RAIL UNION RMT has announced two 48 hour strikes of members working for Jarvis Rail and Fastline in response to a refusal by the company to give guarantees on compulsory redundancies – leaving 200 staff facing the prospect of being thrown on the scrapheap.
The strikes will run from:
06.00 hours on Saturday 27th June 2009 to 06.00 hours Monday 29th June 2009
06.00 hours on Saturday 11th July 2009 to 06.00 hours Monday 13th July 2009
The threat to jobs at Jarvis Rail and Fastline is part of a wider attack on employment on the railways which has put thousands of posts at risk. The threat to staff is also driven by the decision by Network Rail to defer nearly a third of their track renewals work as they aim to claw back nearly £3 billion in savings.
RMT has warned that the cutbacks in track renewals create the conditions for another major tragedy on the railways.
Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary, said today:
"These strikes are in direct response to the jobs massacre on the railways as the companies involved seek to protect profits at the expense of the workforce and the travelling public.
"RMT will not accept that rail engineers, doing essential work, are cannon fodder who can be hired and fired at the whim of accountants and senior managers.
"We warned that the deferral of a third of the renewals programme by Network Rail would have disastrous consequences and our fears are proving well founded."
2 comments:
It's to late for some of us to strike, 450 of have already lost our jobs at Jarvis. Nine and a half years service and shunted up the road. A job for life we all thought. Now the hire and fire mentality will kick in and nobody will care about safety or quality workmanship.
Good luck to those Jarvis Staff that remain.
It's tough for everyone, who's in a renewal company at the present time.
Those at Jarvis have suffered a good deal through no fault of their own, it's more due to incompetence at a high management level than enything else.
But it's the worker at the bottom of the heap who suffers, and is continuing to suffer.
At Jarvis, staff at least have the balls to fight it head on in the only way open to them, industrial action. Which is better than what many have done in other companies, pretty much choosing to roll over and accept what ever comes.
The trouble with rolling over to anything, is that many think it cant get any worse, it invariably does.
For what it's worth good luck boys!
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