London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Oct 10, 2025

Five rail workers on the strike: ‘There is no justification for us to get poorer every year’

Five rail workers on the strike: ‘There is no justification for us to get poorer every year’

People employed on Britain’s railways give their views on the industrial action over pay and conditions

Tens of thousands of rail workers have joined Britain’s biggest nationwide rail strike in 30 years. Disruption is expected for the rest of the week after 40,000 members of the RMT union voted to strike over pay and conditions. Here, five rail workers share their views on the decision to take industrial action.


‘We want to keep the conditions we’ve got now’

TfL train driver, 40s, east Midlands

On the national rail side, the strike has to do with pay and cuts to staffing. But for TfL staff it’s about terms and conditions, not pay. On the Victoria line we have been striking for the last six months on night tube services that have been implemented without our agreement. We’re fighting against this because of fatigue, caring responsibilities – there are various reasons we didn’t want to work night tube, it’s not in our contract.

We want to keep the staffing to pre-pandemic levels for safety. We’ve got stations that are unmanned and if anything happens there’s nobody on those stations. During the pandemic we had a lot of staff with Covid, a lot of staff with long Covid, we’ve had colleagues pass away. Yet we still ran a full service as best we could. I think a lot of the staff have just about had enough. We want some long-term funding. We want to keep London running. We want to keep our jobs and we want to keep the conditions we’ve got now.


‘The threat of using agency workers is laughable’

Signaller, 50s, Surrey

Nobody I work with wants to go on strike, we enjoy our work and signallers are well paid but there is no justification for us to get poorer every year. We have a very responsible job. The first line of the job advert says signallers are the guardians of safety. We worked through the pandemic not questioning the pay freeze or the withholding of annual bonus, but now inflation is seriously affecting our standard of living.

The government wants to shed thousands of maintenance positions, which will have terrible effects on punctuality as faults will not be attended to in a timely manner. It will in turn make my job harder, not to mention the effect it will have on the safety of the travelling public. It will create delays.

The threat of using agency workers is laughable as most railway jobs require specific competency. Signalling is a three-month intensive residential course to get your basic qualification, then you’ve got to start learning how to run each pole, so that’s a non-starter. The maintenance staff, who aren’t very well paid, have completed a four-year apprenticeship. It’s a really stringent course and you’ve got to get retested on it on a regular basis.

The government doesn’t know what it’s talking about and is playing to the anti-union gallery rather than trying to resolve this dispute.


‘They should be looking for reconciliation’

Rail guard, 50s, south-east England

I won’t be striking. I am by no means a supporter of this government, and the bullying rhetoric spouted by ministers is pushing me towards striking. They should be looking for conciliation rather than escalation. On the other hand, the RMT, of which I’m a member, seems hellbent on a 1980s-style political barney. Some parts of the railway, those non-safety-critical parts, need modernising.

Passengers’ needs have changed, yes, but we must not be in a rush to digitise everything, leaving behind those in society for whom the very thought of an app fills them with worry and leaves them excluded.

Having said all this, it matters not one bit if I strike or not; the signallers striking means trains can’t run. If the government are serious about dealing with this then they need to sit down with the Network Rail employees and resolve their issues as a priority, and let the rest of us negotiate with our respective employers.


‘This isn’t only about rail’

Engineering apprentice, 24, Network Rail, Yorkshire

I fully support the strike as I can see how hard my team works with limited resources. Our department is currently not only carrying out their own maintenance duties but also doing the work of other depots that are short-staffed. Failing train operating companies are providing substandard services at inflated ticket costs, as their primary function is to generate profit for their shareholders and not necessarily to provide the best service at the best price.

I don’t have to do overtime but pretty much everyone I work with does, once or twice a week, which admittedly you get good rates for. Morale is OK on my team, but people in my department do bigger projects and so get paid more than people in other typical maintenance roles, where pay is pretty average. They’re going to be struggling a lot with the rising cost of living.

I think this isn’t only about rail, most workers in this country are already doing enough and shouldn’t be struggling to get by. In my view this strike is an opportunity for these issues to become a broader talking point about fairness, and about an economy that works for the people.


‘I’m on strike but think the unions should compromise’

Maintenance worker, 35, south-west England

Personally I have mixed emotions about the strikes. I think it’s right to ask for a pay rise under the same conditions – Network Rail hasn’t raised pay since 2019. If you have low pay, lots of people will leave. We’ve got one of the safest railways in Europe, but if certain conditions change it could quickly become one of the most dangerous. The new terms and conditions are suggesting Network Rail would pay some safety-critical staff about £22,000, which would include nights and unsocial work and using their own vehicles and fuel to reach different bases they’d be booked on to.

On the other hand, I was hopeful of leaving the railway on the voluntary redundancy scheme, which was supposed to be available to everyone before the union put a stop to it for the maintenance grades. The unions should compromise and allow people to leave; a lot of us in maintenance want to. Working nights and weekends and what that does to your body – is that actually worth it for not much more than an Amazon driver makes, working Monday to Friday?

Overall I think the strikes are a fair idea and I have joined them, but I also feel there has to be change and Network Rail has to cut costs, with falling passenger numbers and all.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
×