The RMT said it was not making a recommendation on how to vote on the offer, compared with a similar offer in December 2022, which union officials advised members to reject…reports Asian Lite News
The deadline for RMT members to vote for the latest Network Rail offer has now passed, with members expected to vote in favour of the offer.
The new offer includes a salary increase of 14.4 per cent for the lowest paid and 9.2 per cent for the highest paid staff.
There is an additional 1.1 per cent on basic earnings and increased backpay. The results are expected to be announced shortly.
The RMT said it was not making a recommendation on how to vote on the offer, compared with a similar offer in December 2022, which union officials advised members to reject.
On Sunday, senior rail sources were “quietly confident” a majority of workers had backed the pay offer.
“After ten months in which the government refused to negotiate, finally a compromise.”
A senior industry source said: “We [are] not counting our chickens, but the mood music is certainly more positive. That’s principally because the union hasn’t put out a communication to reject it. Everything we’ve heard is very positive. People are voting for it in bigger numbers than last time. The vast majority of members have already voted and we’re expecting a majority will have voted in favour.”
A pay deal being reached would pave the way for months of strike action to end. Additional disputes involving the train drivers union Aslef still need to be resolved, however.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “We will continue our campaign for a negotiated settlement on all aspects of the railway dispute.”
Speaking on Saturday, Lynch said RMT members are not prepared to “swallow vast changes to their working conditions” in exchange for a “poor pay rise”.
The union leader compared the government’s approach to transport workers with public sector workers, stating: “We need a change in attitude. We’ve seen a bit of that in the health service and maybe in the teachers’ unions. The difference in that is there are no conditions, it’s new money – but our members are expected to swallow vast changes to their working conditions and they’re not prepared to do that to get a very modest, poor pay rise.”
The RMT said that more than 20,000 workers will be taking strike action unless there is a negotiated settlement.
Four labor unions have called three, 24-hour strikes over the next eight days, ensuring service disruptions for much of the week…reports Asian Lite News
Trains in Britain all but ground to a halt Saturday as coordinated strikes by rail workers added to a week of turmoil caused by soaring energy prices and unfunded tax cuts that roiled financial markets.
Only about 11% of train services were expected to operate across the UK. According to Network Rail. Unions said they called the latest in a series of one-day strikes to demand that wage increases keep pace with inflation that is expected to peak at around 11% this month.
Consumers were also hit with a jump in their energy bills Saturday as the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushes gas and electricity prices higher. Household bills are expected to rise by about 20%, even after the government stepped in to cap prices.
Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has been in office less than a month, cited the cost-of-living crisis as the reason she moved swiftly to introduce a controversial economic stimulus program, which includes 45 billion pounds ($48 billion) of unfunded tax cuts.
Concern that the plans would push government debt to unsustainable levels sent the pound tumbling to a record low against the dollar this week and forced the Bank of England to intervene in the bond market.
“We need to get things done in this country more quickly,” Truss said in an unapologetic column for The Sun newspaper published Saturday. “So I am going to do things differently. It involves difficult decisions and does involve disruption in the short term.”
Many workers aren’t convinced.
Four labor unions have called three, 24-hour strikes over the next eight days, ensuring service disruptions for much of the week.
The timing is of particular concern for runners and fans trying to get to the capital for Sunday’s London Marathon, with is expected to attract 42,000 competitors.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union, said the strikes were designed to target the annual conference of Truss’s Conservative Party, which begins Sunday in Birmingham, England.
“We don’t want to inconvenience the public, and we’re really sorry that that’s happening,” Lynch said. “But the government has brought this dispute on. They (put) the challenges down to us, to cut our jobs, to cut our pensions and to cut our wages against inflation.”
Lynch urged Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan to take “urgent steps to allow a negotiated settlement.” The union said the latest figures showed railway bosses benefiting from government tax cuts.
As a result of the strike, there will be no service between London and major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle on Saturday. Lingering disruptions are likely to effect service on Sunday morning as well.
Runners and spectators traveling to London for the marathon, which begins at 9:30 a.M., have been warned they are likely to be frustrated by the strike.
“It is particularly disheartening that this weekend’s strike will hit the plans of thousands of runners who have trained for months to take part in the iconic London Marathon,” said Daniel Mann, director of industry operations at Rail Delivery Group. “That will also punish the many charities, large and small, who depend on sponsorship money raised by such events to support the most vulnerable in our community.
A mix of electrification, energy efficiency and a switch to renewable energy will be needed to enable this goal…reports Asian Lite News.
The direct supply of solar energy to Indian Railway lines — without the need to connect via the grid — would save almost seven million tons of carbon a year whilst also powering at least one in four train on the national network on competitive terms, a new study by Delhi-based Climate Trends and UK-based green tech start-up Riding Sunbeams said on Wednesday.
According to the Indian Railways 2019/2020 annual report, there was passenger traffic of over 8bn in that period, which would mean that 2bn passengers could be travelling on trains directly powered by solar energy.
Prime Minister Modi recently announced that the electrification of railways in India is progressing fast, and that the target is for the Railways to be a net-zero carbon emitter by 2030.
A mix of electrification, energy efficiency and a switch to renewable energy will be needed to enable this goal.
Rail Minister Piyush Goyal has issued a directive to Indian Railways to earmark huge areas of unproductive land for solar development as part of the company’s Net Zero commitment. Plans are already underway to deliver 20GW of solar generation to match growing demand for energy to move trains.
The new analysis highlights that around a quarter of this new solar capacity — up to 5,272 MW — could be fed directly into the Railway’s overhead lines instead of being procured over the electricity networks, reducing energy losses and saving money for the rail operator.
The researchers found that substituting energy supplied from the coal-dominated grid for private-wire supply from solar could also rapidly cut emissions by as much as 6.8 million tons CO2 each year — just over the entire annual emissions of Kanpur.
Report co-author, Riding Sunbeams founder and director of innovation Leo Murray said, “Right now India is leading the world on two vital climate frontiers — rail electrification and solar power deployment. Our analysis shows that connecting these two keystone low-carbon technologies together in Indian Railways can drive both India’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and its efforts to transition off fossil fuels to tackle the climate crisis.”
Report co-author and Director at Climate Trends Aarti Khosla said, “Indian Railways plays an important role in the lives of every Indian. Not only is it the most practical mode of transportation, it is also the most famous and the largest employer in the country.
“The government pumps large sums of money to modernise the railways, which, in turn, will play a large role in a net zero vision of the nation. There has been analysis that converting all diesel locomotives to electric will indeed increase the emissions in the short term, however, this report shows the tremendous opportunity of doing it right the first time, by creating a direct connection of the locomotive system to solar PV installations, meeting more than a quarter of the total demand.”
The researchers also warned, however, that achieving the target of full electrification of all routes by 2023 could be accompanied by an increase in CO2 emissions in the short term because of India’s current reliance on coal to produce electricity.
The team analysed the traction energy demand on each of India’s railway zones and matched this with the potential solar resource in each region to produce a figure for the total amount of solar energy that could be connected directly to the railway to run trains.
The top five zones with the greatest solar-to-rail potential are: South Central Railway (394-625 MW) that serves Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Pondicherry.
The Central Railway (299-475 MW) that caters to Maharashtra; the Northern Railway (290-459 MW) that serves Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi; Western Railway (280-443 MW) that serves Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh; and West Central Railway (278-440 MW) that caters to Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and some parts in Uttar Pradesh.
The calculations assume that all of the energy generated by the solar is used by the Railways, and do not include the potential for battery storage integration. Factoring in lower utilization rates and storage could boost solar-to-rail potential to over 40 per cent of Indian Railways’ traction energy demand.
The study explores how strategic investment in dedicated freight corridors and new high speed routes can support Indian Railways to boost passengers and freight traffic, and the key role this can play in achieving India’s national climate change commitments.
The report also highlights the problem of Indian Railways’ dependence on coal, both as an energy source and as its key freight commodity, accounting for almost a third of its revenue in 2018-19.
