![]() ![]() Next is Andrew Haines, CEO of Network Rail, on £585,000. Top of the list is Mark Thurston, CEO of HS2 Ltd, who earns £620,000. ![]() In the list of highest earning public sector officials (senior civil servants and senior officials in departments, agencies and non-departmental public bodies), 9 out of the top 10 are from the transport industry and 8 of the 10 are in rail. Eversholt, in 2020, paid a £46.5 million dividend. The rolling stock companies – which buy the locomotives and carriages to lease to the operators – pocketed £3 billion in 2020/21 – a 5% increase on 2019/20. Now passenger numbers are almost back to pre-pandemic levels, bumper payouts are back on the companies’ agendas, too.īetween March 2020 and March 2021 train operators were paid management fees of more than £132 million. Even in the year of covid they paid out £38 million. The claim that the money for a pay rise doesn’t exist is not borne out by the facts.īefore the pandemic, operators were paying out dividends of £262 million. Wages are chasing prices, not putting them up.’ The government isn’t asking companies to cut profits or dividend payments to help manage inflation. ‘Wage rises aren’t exacerbating inflation, anyway. And this isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about setting one worker against another. 30 strikes driver#‘If a train driver doesn’t get a cost of living increase, it won’t mean that a nurse, or care worker, or cleaner will get one. Whatever happened to the Tory wish for good, well-paid, jobs? Obviously that’s only for the CEOs, not for the workers doing the job. Mick said: ‘We don’t think we’re special we believe no worker in this country should put up with pay cuts year after year just because this government has allowed inflation to rise. It takes a year to train a driver who can be responsible for the lives of up to 1,300 people on any journey. Especially as the train companies are doing very nicely, thank you, out of Britain’s railways with handsome profits, dividends for shareholders, and big salaries for managers.’īeing a train driver is a professional, technical, and safety-critical job. ‘It’s not unreasonable to ask your employer to make sure you’re not worse off for a third successive year. Mick said: ‘We want an increase in line with the cost of living – we want to be able to buy, in 2022, what we could buy in 2021 – for those members – who were, you will remember, the people who moved key workers and goods around the country during the pandemic – who have not had a pay rise since 2019. ‘Strike action is, now, the only option available but we are always open to talks if the train companies, or the government, want to talk to us and make a fair and sensible offer.’ĪSLEF members at eight companies – Arriva Rail London Chiltern Railways Greater Anglia Great Western Hull Trains LNER Southeastern and West Midlands Trains – will strike on Saturday 30 July. That means, in real terms, with inflation running ahead at 9%, 10%, and even 11% this year, according to which index you use, that they are being told to take a real terms pay cut. ![]() ‘And these companies are offering us nothing, saying their hands have been tied by the government. 30 strikes drivers#The drivers at the companies where we are striking have had a real terms pay cut over the last three years – since April 2019. ‘But we’ve been forced into this position by the train companies, driven by the Tory government. ‘We don’t want to inconvenience passengers – not least because our friends and families use public transport, too, and we believe in building trust in the railways in Britain – and we don’t want to lose money by going on strike. Mick Whelan, general secretary, said: ‘We don’t want to go on strike – strikes are the result of a failure of negotiation – and this union, since I was elected GS in 2011, has only ever been on strike, until this year, for a handful of days. ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, has announced a day of strike action after train companies failed to make a pay offer to keep pace with the increase in the cost of living. ![]()
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