MICK Lynch says the Government’s offer to end the rail dispute “isn’t good enough” but he insisted his union was still ready to talk and find a breakthrough.

Speaking on GB News, Mr Lynch was asked what it was he and his members wanted.
He said: “What’s been put on the table are thousands of job cuts that they want to bring in. They want to shut every booking office at every station in Britain. They want to change our members’ terms and conditions in a detrimental way and they’re saying that is necessary so that they can increase efficiency to create more profit for the private sector.

“Train operators will make 400 million pounds in profit this year. And the government has spent over one and a quarter billion pounds on this dispute which would have funded a reasonable pay rise. What we’ve been offered is a 9% offer over two years. But we haven’t had a pay deal for four years. So that’s basically 9% over the last four years, which isn’t good enough for our people. It’s not as good as the Network Rail offer. And they also want us in the document to declare that the dispute is over and then go and negotiate a load of detrimental changes. And we’re not prepared to do that. “We’re not going to give up our mandate and our leverage at the negotiating table halfway through the dispute. So there are a lot of preconditions on it that we just cannot accept. But the fact is that this government is determined to keep this dispute going because they’ve got issues in in health care and with the nurses and the doctors with the teachers, and they’re trying to clamp down on working people’s pay so that they can transfer that wealth to the rich people of this society where dividends and profits are up.

“The stock exchanges are up, the economy is growing, but they want to do that on the basis of low pay and we’re not prepared to accept that. We want our people to earn a decent living. They work around the clock 365 days a year on shift work and we haven’t had a pay rise. So what’s on the table isn’t good enough. So we need to improve on that and we’re ready to negotiate an agreement whenever they want to get back to us.”
Pressed on the timing of today’s strikes he added: “The reason we’re on strike today is because of the Tory anti trade union laws. The talks broke down two weeks ago and we have a six month mandate that runs out tomorrow. This is the only day under that legislation with two weeks notice that we could take this action following that breakdown of discussion. So we’ve now got another mandate that came in after that announcement we got a week ago or so. And that runs on for another six months. So the way that the Tories constructed the trade union legislation, which we know is hostile to the trade unions and working people, means that we have to take this action today. It’s the only day inside that mandate that it can happen.”