Banners fluttered next to rail worker Karl Schofield and his colleagues, clad in gloves, hats and coats on the steps of Lime Street station.
Cups of tea, car horns, and a speaker blasting music kept spirits high on Wednesday, January 4, but it's colder than it was in June when we last spoke. Karl, 36, told the ECHO: "It's a lot colder. It's easier to come onto a picket line when it's a little bit warmer, but the fight continues."
Up to 40,000 rail workers employed by Network Rail and 14 train operators are losing pay for each of the two 48-hour strikes they're participating in this week - on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. But after more than six months of industrial action over a below-inflation pay rise and proposed changes to working conditions, union members are prepared to "be here another six months if needs be", according to train guard Frank Leech.
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A rail worker for a decade, Karl had given up his car and took his daughter on trips to the park instead of paying for activities to keep costs down by the time the strike started in June. He's got a car again, albeit smaller and cheaper, but the cost still eats into his wage.
Despite losing pay on strike days - the RMT can't afford to pay members like bigger unions can - Karl said in June he "can't afford not to" strike because "anything under inflation is a real terms pay cut", adding: "We're getting pushed further and further onto the breadline."
As the UK heads into the "worst and longest recession" in the G7, that squeeze only gets tighter. Food prices rose at record levels in December when annual food inflation jumped to 13.3%, and money saving expert Martin Lewis warned energy bills will rise another 20% in April.
Train operating companies, which paid shareholders £800m in dividends in 2021, have offered rail workers a pay rise of 4% for last year and 4% for this year. RMT voted to reject this real-terms pay cut, but Frank believes they may well have settled for it if inflation was around 6%, roughly half its current level.
William Kimm, 62, is an RMT branch secretary, whose long, white beard has earned him the nickname 'Santa' on the picket. He told the ECHO: "I never used to look at the price of a loaf or the price of a pack of teabags, but now even I have to look. because the price of living has just gone through the roof. There's nothing coming down - gas, leccy, petrol. Everything has gone up.
"It's worrying, it's very worrying. It's a sad state of affairs that I've worked all these years only to get to later in life and I'm looking at the price of teabags and when we put the heating on. But I'm not on my own. Every working class person is having those struggles, and we've got a government that doesn't care.
"They may say we're all in this together, but they don't care. Because at the end of the day, if they did care, the National Health Service wouldn't be in the state it's in, and all the other disputes - who'd have thought two or three years ago you'd have barristers on strike, nurses going on strike?"
The "most militant union in the land", according to Karl, RMT members were some of the first to walk out in what became a year of strikes over pay, safety and conditions. Criminal barristers, bus drivers and Jacob's factory workers won their disputes after being offered improved pay deals.
Even other rail workers, represented by Unite and Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), ended their strikes in December after voting to accept an offer including a minimum 9% pay rise by this month, guarantees on terms and conditions, and job security to 2025. But one of the biggest strikes in decades rolls on.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said "it is time that the RMT got off the picket line and around the negotiating table", while Network Rail's chief negotiator Tim Shoveller said a deal is "within touching distance". That's not quite the view of Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT, who claimed there's been "radio silence" from the government.
The RMT said the government is "blocking" a resolution between the union, train operators and Network Rail, a claim the Transport Secretary denies. Harper said: "There is a fair and reasonable pay offer on the table. There is not a bottomless pit of taxpayers' money here. Taxpayers have put a huge amount of investment into the rail industry over the last few years when it was hit with a huge impact from the pandemic when people weren't travelling."
This strike has always been about more than pay. It's also about plans the RMT fears will make rail services, already plagued by delays and cancellations, worse. Wrapped up in the offer from employers are changes to working conditions, like cuts to manual track inspections and the extension of driver-only services. Network Rail claims "safety will actually improve both for workers and the public" due to remote monitoring of infrastructure.
Safety critical staff like Karl say passengers are put at risk when guards are removed from trains and drivers have to rely on cameras to check the platform and doors before departing a station.
Changes to safety critical staff could also reduce accessibility for people with disabilities, according to William, who said: "On a daily basis, we help and support people at work who are disabled, or individuals who've had a little bit too much to drink - we're there to help and support them. Without us, isn't their life more difficult? How do they get from A to B?"
RMT boss Mick Lynch claimed the Department for Transport brought negotiations to a halt in December by insisting upon the inclusion of driver-only operations in a potential settlement. The Transport Secretary denied this, saying: "That absolutely isn't true. In fact, since I became Transport Secretary a couple of months ago, I met all the union leaders, I tried to change the tone of the discussions and I said that ministers would help facilitate the trade unions and the employers, that is the train operating companies and Network Rail, getting around the table."
As the months have dragged on since the strike began, the fight has extended beyond the details of any offer on pay and conditions. Rail workers outside Lime Street feel they're being made an example of by a government that's just announced legislation to limit to ability of some public sector workers to take strike action.
On Thursday, January 5, the government said it would bring in a new law allowing employers to sue trade unions if they don't provide set minimum levels of fire, ambulance and rail services during strikes. It said it will reserve the power to impose minimum service levels on the health, education and nuclear sectors, only to be used if voluntary agreements can't be reached.
Unions described it as an "attack" on workers and Labour leader Keir Starmer said his party would repeal the law. Karl said: "It attacks the democratic right of every worker in this country to take industrial action and withdraw their labour when their employer treats them wrong."
His union is set to meet the government for talks next week, but there's little hope on the picket line for a swift resolution. Karl said: "I'll quote Bob Crow, our late general secretary, and what he always said was - 'If you fight, you might lose. But if you don't fight, you're always going to lose' - so we may lose, they may not give in, but our members certainly won't give in, and we'll go down swinging."
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