TSSA News Release

The TSSA rail union announced that the ballot would begin next Friday, February 26, and would end on Friday March 12.

A yes vote in a series of strike and action short of strike ballots would see action begin from Sunday March 21 in the run up to the Easter getaway.

The ballots have been called in protest at Network Rail’s plan to axe 1500 maintenance jobs and impose working changes on remaining staff.

Gerry Doherty, union general secretary, said: "I hope that we can avoid any disruption over the Easter break and I am calling on Network Rail to start serious discussions with us now to prevent that happening.

"Not only are they insisting on going ahead with these job cuts but they are refusing to give us a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies when they keep claiming the jobs will go on a voluntary basis."

He refused to speculate on what form the strike action the supervisors and managers in the maintenance works and depots would take but even 24-hour walkouts would seriously hamper key maintenance tasks and quickly disrupt travel.

He accused NR of "macho management" in the run up to the General Election in a bid to impress the new Government, be it Labour or Tory.

He also warned another 1500 members in Network Rail would be balloted on strike action if NR did not improve on an 0.8% pay offer by next Tuesday.

"This offer comes at a time when inflation has risen to 3.7% so they are in effect asking our members to take a 2 per cent pay cut for next year.

"Iain Coucher is always very generous in awarding himself bumper bonuses every year - even last year when he gave up one third of his bonus in a PR stunt he still managed to walk away with over £350,000 on top of his £600,000 salary.

"We would like him to be more generous to the staff this year and less generous to himself and his richly rewarded fellow directors."