UK (Commonwealth Union)_The rail sector has announced that there will be no trains between London and the largest cities in Britain on Saturday due to a combination of union strikes and Unite will be participating in a 24-hour walkout in the ongoing dispute over wages and conditions.
Overall service will be reduced to just 11% of the regularly scheduled hours. Other crucial employees, such as RMT signallers at Network Rail, as well as Aslef’s drivers at 14 operators, are on strike. Translink has encouraged customers to avoid traveling unless it is necessary. There would be no trains between London and important cities, like the Midlands, where the Conservative summit begins on Saturday, even though hundreds of backup employees will try to run some services, contrary to past strike days.
Furthermore, no trains will depart the city for Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Brighton, or Norwich. In extensive portions of the network, there will be no services at all, which will have an impact on trains on Sunday morning. Trains will start running later in the morning and end up running earlier in the evening.
On Wednesday, October 5, passengers on routes operated by the 14 affected operators will experience delays due to another strike by Aslef drivers: Avanti West Coast, Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Greater Anglia, Great Western Railway, Heathrow Express, Hull Trains, LNER, London Overground, Northern Trains, Southeastern, TransPennine Express, and West Midlands Trains. Finally, there is remuneration: many rail workers who kept services operating throughout the epidemic have not received a salary raise in three years, and now inflation is rapidly destroying their income. The significant drop in rail passenger income, however, has forced the government-hired train operators to limit raises, and Network Rail has stated that raises must be offset by “modernizing” the workplace.
