Southern responds to RMT strike call

In response to the RMT’s new strike date, Andy Bindon, HR Director at Govia Thameslink Railway, Southern’s parent company, said:

“We are hugely disappointed that once again the RMT has called a strike, particularly since we put a further reasonable offer to the union today.

“The RMT’s proposals would mean cancelling trains and reducing service levels to our passengers. Our service levels are stabilising at the highest we’ve seen in years and we cannot agree to anything which will jeopardise running trains and the service to our passengers.

"With passenger numbers doubling every 20 years, railway capacity is being addressed by a UK-wide railway modernisation programme that necessitates change. We ask the RMT to help us to underpin and maximise train frequency and capacity now and for the future.”

Southern ran 95% of its services during the last RMT strike, on 8 April. This next strike would be the RMT’s 32nd day of action.

The RMT is asking us to cancel any train that – in exceptional circumstances – would not have a second member of staff on board.

While we assign on-board supervisors to each train that previously had a conductor, on occasions this may not be possible. In this situation we would rather run the service than cancel it.

Southern is running over 25,000 additional services a month using this extended method of operation. This is in addition to the tens of thousands of services that previously ran this way across the GTR network.

Both the Director of Railway Safety at the Office of Rail and Road, and the Rail Safety and Standards Board state that this driver-controlled method of operation is safe.