Network Rail dismissals threat

Network Rail has threatened to sack its entire maintenance workforce of 13,000 and re-employ a reduced number on new terms and conditions, in a bid to bulldoze through what the RMT rail union describes as a multi-billion pound cuts package.

RMT general secretary, Bob Crow, said that the union was taking the threat deadly seriously.

He described the rail maintenance workforce as having “a gun pointed at their heads”. But he added that the union would refuse to “negotiate in an atmosphere of threats and intimidation designed to bully our members into signing up to job losses and attacks on their terms and conditions”.