18.05.17
Aslef piles more pressure on Southern with overtime ban for drivers
Disruption on Southern services are set to worsen as union Aslef announced its members would no longer work overtime on the operator’s services, until a resolution had been reached over the plans to introduce driver-only operation (DOO).
Drivers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the overtime ban, as 77% of Aslef’s members turned out to vote, with 87.3% backing a strike and 95.6% backing action short of a strike.
The announcement of the action, which starts on 4 June, is likely to cause more headaches for Southern bosses as it comes in the same week that fellow union RMT announced another tranche of industrial action on services. In April, Aslef narrowly rejected a deal to bring the DOO dispute with Southern to an end.
Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, stated that Southern had left the union no choice but to walk out after it had not co-operated in talks.
“We have been talking to Southern to try and resolve the outstanding issues in a way which works for drivers, passengers, and the company,” he said. “Unfortunately, the company has refused to move its position so we have, reluctantly, informed them that our members will refuse to work overtime from the end of this month.”
But Southern told a wholly different story, stating that it was “dismayed” at the decision to implement the overtime ban.
“After over five months of intense negotiations and two peace deals agreed and recommended by the Aslef executive, we are dismayed the union leadership is taking this action, which is designed to impact as many of our passengers as possible,” said Nick Brown, chief operating officer at GTR stated.
Brown also argued that DOO with on-board supervisors had been fully implemented back in January – meaning the operator was now able to run more trains than before and improve services for five consecutive months.
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