| ASLEF calls off South West Trains strike |
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| Thursday, 27 March 2008 | |
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The threatened four days of industrial action on South West Trains has been suspended.
LAST UPDATED: 10:27pm, 28 March 2008 The Associated Train Crew Union (ATCU) said on Thursday morning that the ASLEF union had put industrial action on hold pending referral of a revised offer to the ASLEF Executive. Major disruptions A senior spokesperson for the ASLEF union, however, told Director of Finance Online that ACTU's claim that the strike had been suspended was "absolutely ridiculous". Two hours later, however, ASLEF confirmed the supenseion on its own website: "The industrial action planned for next week on South West Trains has been suspended following a formula agreed between negotiators for the company and ASLEF, the train drivers’ union." The union said that the draft agreement will be considered by the union’s executive at its meeting in mid-April. "This will be followed by a referendum of ASLEF members in SWT to judge its acceptability. At that stage the action will be re-imposed or called off," ASLEF added. SWT drivers reported on the rail discussion board Railchat.co.uk that they had received an email from ASLEF at 10pm on Wednesday, which read, "Dear Colleagues, This evening we reached an agreement with SWT to suspend the industrial action next week - providing the EC accept the proposed deal tabled today. Ultimately, if sanctioned by the EC tomorrow, you will vote whether or not to accept the current proposal on offer, which will be explained in detail once the EC have seen it tomorrow." SWT still reported in an update on its website on Thursday that ASLEF would go ahead with major disruptions to the transport system from one minute past midnight on 31 March to midnight on 3 April. "We met with ASLEF on Thursday 20 March for informal talks in an effort to avoid strike action, and another meeting is planned for next week," SWT said. Responding to the news of ASLEFS decision, it added at noon that it would now be running a normal service next week and said it was delighted that passengers would not be inconvenienced. Negotiations ongoing ASLEF criticised SWT last week after the rail operator announced that the strike would go ahead while negotiations were still ongoing. The union ASLEF entered into a dispute with South West Trains (SWT) over the current pay round and announced it would be taking four days of consecutive strike action starting on Monday 31 March. The current pay offer by SWT of a 4.5 per cent no strings deal has been rejected by the ASLEF Executive. The offer would have given a driver working in the London area a basic salary before overtime of £40,447 for a 37-hour, 4.4-day week. All other trades unions offered the deal have accepted it or recommended it to their non-driver members in a ballot. Proposed action "tactically weak" A spokesman for ATCU told Director of Finance Online that talk at SWT was that an offer had been made but that the union representatives considered it to be quite poor. "As there appears to be scant suport for proposed action, however, that would lose a weeks pay plus some of the annual attendance bonus with little chance of getting the losses back from any likely enhances offer, ASLEF are said to have bowed to the inevitable," he added. ATCU's position is that the proposed action was tactically weak and did not represent the aspirations of the SWT Drivers. Replacement buses Despite the threatened action South West Trains said it would run at least 300 train services each day and would have buses from sister company Stagecoach Bus at its disposal from depots throughout the UK. Related articles
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