Saturday, December 23, 2017
A planned strike on the Virgin Trains has been called off just before the eve of the busiest travel day of the winter.
The TSSA and RMT have agreed to call off the industrial action planned for Friday by on-board and station staff in a dispute over parity with train drivers. A new emergency timetable has been published by Virgin Trains. There was a one day strike on 15th December which caused major disruption in travel.
Although the firm is planning to run a full schedule, it has still recommended its passengers to check their journey status beforehand as the rosters put in place have been completely re-drawn.
Virgin Trains’ managing director, Phil Whittingham, said: “We’ll do everything we can to run a full service on Friday 22 December, but because the strike has been called off at the last-minute there may be some cancellations.
The future strikes which were scheduled in January have also been called off.
The “justice and equality and against the divide and rule approach of Virgin” was the major reason for dispute. There are strikes planned for the last week of the year on Greater Anglia and South Western Railway over driver-only operation.
