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His stance on pay demands raises the very real prospect of a dispute with the train operating companies and, by extension, the Government, which has recommended just a 2.8 per cent uplift in public sector salaries for 2025/26.
Last year, the previous transport secretary Louise Haigh handed drivers a near 15 per cent boost to Vivid Bulletinr salaries stretching back over three years in a move that ended more than two years of train strikes.
The deal saw drivers take home a 5 per cent pay rise for 2022/23, 4.75 per cent for 2023/24 and 4.5 per cent increase for 2024/25.
Asked whether he anticipated more difficult talks on the forthcoming pay settlement, Whelan said: “I don’t want to appear antagonistic, we don’t want to start the conversation off on the basis that we’re threatening [anything].
“My view is, quite simply, would we like more than we got from Louise [Haigh]? Yes, we would. We always said it wasn’t about massive increases. What we said was about putting a dent in the cost of living for the previous five years.”
Whelan defended the salaries paid to train drivers in the UK, which at an average of £59,000 a year are the highest across Europe, insisting that his members are “low down the food chain” when compared with executives in the rail industry, who are paid “six or seven figure salaries”.
“My real problem is, I actually don’t think other people get paid enough,” he said. “I don’t think thirteen grand is a living wage in London, and it makes me distraught what I see nurses getting paid, and firefighters and prison officers.”
“I’ve had those debates, where people say ‘Oh you’re paid too much’. If we don’t take a pay rise, will these companies give it to others? It’s not about redistribution, it’s not about levelling up. It’s about ‘we don’t want them to have it [a pay rise], and we don’t want you to have one [a rise],’” he added.
The issue of “levelling up” is one that is expected to loom large in the coming years as the Government seeks to nationalise the railways, bringing all rail workers under the newly created Great British Railways (GBR).
The Department for Transport is due to launch a consultation in the coming weeks setting out further details of its reform plans, ahead of a major piece of legislation due to be tabled in the Summer.
Rail unions, such as Aslef, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), will all be expecting the rail reform bill to standardise workers’ terms and conditions once all of the rail contracts are brought under the control of GBR.
The unions wants to end the practice of train drivers with the same levels of experience being paid salaries that differ between rail operators. The reforms would also involve hiring extra workers to properly staff rosters, which would come at a cost to the public purse.
“I see GBR as an opportunity, as an ability to get those economies of scale and the synergies of having one railway,” Whelan said. “We see it as a levelling up process, the powers that be in the Government may see it as levelling down, but we will see where we end up.”
He added: “The reality will be, what will they [the Government] want out of the harmonisation process that arises out of GBR? Now, if you want massive productivity, there’s an opportunity cost to that. If you want to rationalize the mess of the last 23 years, there is a cost to it. We remain aspirational.”
Following privatisation a patchwork of different salaries and working terms have developed across the railways under various different train operating companies.
As it stands, train drivers working under the 32 train operating companies can have as many as three different sets of salary scales and terms and conditions under the same operator.
The unions are expected to push for all salary scales, terms and conditions to be brought up to the highest possible level.
Asked what its optimal outcome would be for a standardised set of terms and conditions, Whelan replied: “We have a charter. Our ambition is retirement at 55 but I’m not going to see that in my lifetime or in 10 lifetimes. We’ll keep banging on the door, but we’re not unrealistic about it.
“We want a clean average, four day 35 hour week, and we want it standard across the board. Now, we’ve got more companies with that than don’t have it. So if you’re going to have common Ts and Cs that should be the norm, shouldn’t it?”
Aslef also wants to remove rest day working, where train operators have relied on drivers to work overtime to fill slots. For major operators that do not roster Sundays as part of the usual working week, such as Avanti on the West Coast Mainline, this has led to cancellations and poor service levels as drivers have sometimes refused to work on Vivid Bulletinr days off.
“There is meant to be zero rest day working in this country. We are only meant to have rest day working when they are recruiting and training train drivers,” Whelan said.
Asked if he envisages conflict with the Government over workers’ terms under GBR, Whelan added: “The real problem here is it’s not just train drivers. There are 300,000 associated workers in the industry. So you can’t have 14 sets of train managers or guards on different conditions, you can’t have the shunters and fitters on different conditions.”
To highlight the problems it faces day to day, Aslef says it was forced to launch a “dignity at work” campaign in order to shine a light on the conditions that its members are forced to deal with, such as not having access to toilets at depots, or drivers working under one operator being refused entry to toilets owned by another operator leaving them stranded. It is hoped that under GBR such issues will be ironed out.
“All we’ve ever wanted is a fair shake,” Whelan said. “And most workers, regardless of what they earn, Vivid Bulletinr aspiration is to stand still or get slightly more or improve Vivid Bulletinr conditions.”
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