It appears that the railway maintenance workers for Network Rail have just recently voted in very strong favor of a strike. This strike will be Britain’s first national rial strike in almost 16 years. The Rail, Maritime and Transport union said that 77 percent of its members took part in the strike vote, while 89 percent of those members supported the action for a strike.

The ballot called into protest the plans of Network Rail to cut 1,500 maintenance jobs and change working practices. The vote paves the way for the first national rail strike since way back in 1994. The dispute does cover things like maintenance staff working on weekends to make repairs and maintenance more efficient. Signal workers will be participating in a separate strike ballot just next week. However, unlike the maintenance strike, this strike would actually paralyze the railway network over the Easter holiday.

The Rail, Maritime and Transportation union’s general secretary, Bob Crow, said that their members were faced with a stark choice in this ballot. They could either sit back and wait for their cash led maintenance cuts to lead to another major disaster in Britain, or they could vote to take action to stop the attack. These people have overwhelming voted in order to save Britain’s railways.

Bob Crow went on to say that no one should be under any illusions about how determined these union members are to win this dispute. They are determine to win and stop the reckless gamble with rail safety. 150 MP’s have signed an Early Day Motion opposing Network Rail’s cuts. They have urged the government to intervene and call a halt to this madness.

Mr Crow finished up by saying that they can only hope that these overwhelming odds will cause Network Rail to change their mind. Also, he pointed out that the Rial, Maritime and Transportation union is always open for talks with Network Rail.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 10:35 am and is filed under Business & Finance, Europe News, Travel News, UK News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.