Four weeks of disruption on the railways begin on Tuesday with the first 48-hour strike of the festive period, the day after it was revealed that the largest rail union voted to reject the latest offer.
Just over 60% of the RMT union’s members at Network Rail voted against an improved deal in an electronic referendum.
The RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, said it was a “huge rejection of Network Rail’s substandard offer and shows that our members are determined to take further strike action in pursuit of a negotiated settlement”.
He added: “The government is refusing to lift a finger to prevent these strikes and it is clear they want to make effective strike action illegal in Britain.
“We will resist that and our members, along with the entire trade union movement, will continue their campaign for a square deal for workers, decent pay increases and good working conditions.”
The strikes by 40,000 members of the RMT at Network Rail and 14 train operators are expected to leave a maximum of about 20% of services running around Britain on those days. Trains will run between the hours of 7.30am and 6.30pm with a reduced service on main intercity and urban lines, with no trains at all in much of rural England, Scotland, and Wales.
They will take place on 13-14 and 16-17 December, with an overtime ban at the train operators then causing various degrees of disruption until the following strikes on 3-4 and 6-7 January.
Another strike will mainly affect engineering works from late Christmas Eve until 7am on 27 December – with ongoing works also affecting remaining travel over the festive period.
The strikes will go ahead despite the relatively close ballot, with members voting by 63.6% on an 83% turnout to reject the latest offer from Network Rail in an electronic referendum.
The announcement of the result on Monday afternoon was met with dismay at Network Rail. The chief executive, Andrew Haines, said that “the RMT leadership needs to think long and hard about what to do next”.
Haines said the strikes would “cause further misery for the rail industry and for their members who will lose pay”.
Earlier, another union, Unite, had disclosed that its members had voted to accept the offer from Network Rail, which owns and operates Britain’s tracks, signalling and most of its big stations.
Although Unite has only a very small number of rail workers working in electricity control rooms, the result is significant as it means the union has called off parallel strikes over December and January. Network Rail will have more contingency cover during strikes, not least for its Christmas engineering programme.
A third union, TSSA, has suspended industrial action at Network Rail while it also ballots its members.
Haines said the Unite ballot result made the RMT’s stance “especially frustrating”, adding: “The RMT are the outliers here, they need to stop playing politics and work with us to bring this dispute to an end.”
He said: “There is clearly a significant number of Network Rail colleagues who want this deal, but are caught up by these needless strikes and collective bargaining. Our offer, which is worth over 9%, with a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies and no changes to anyone’s terms and conditions, remains on the table.”
Network Rail said that it would continue to work closely with operators to run as many services as possible during this week’s strike, but asked passengers to only travel if absolutely necessary.
