South West Trains dispute stepped up

The RMT rail union was conducting an industrial action ballot of all drivers and guards on South West Trains as Labour Research went to press. This follows one-day strikes of drivers based at Waterloo station in south London over the sacking of safety rep and driver Sarah Friday, who was dismissed allegedly for not carrying out a manager's instruction to drive a train. Friday's union RMT says that she had been kept for a formal interview by management and was therefore unable to drive the train.

South West Trains has issued passengers with an inflammatory letter referring to Friday as "a train driver dismissed.for not doing her job". The new ballot covers not only Waterloo but also 10 other depots ranging as far as Weymouth.

Meanwhile workers at Stagecoach Western in south west Scotland are continuing their action over a pay dispute. The 500 members of the T&G transport union have so far taken five days of strike action.

And manufacturing union MSF is planning to ballot Rolls Royce workers at Derby and Nottingham after the company announced 2,000 redundancies (see page 5).

At STV and Grampian Television (both part of the Scottish Media Group) a strike by journalists and technicians hit TV output last month. The dispute, involving the NUJ and BECTU broadcasting unions with around 300 members between them, is over a new pay structure which will mean pay cuts or freezes for much of the workforce.

However, lecturers at Scottish Universities have suspended strike action while a new offer on contracts is put to members. The lecturers are in dispute over the introduction of new contracts which would lead to changes in hours and holidays. After four days of strike action, further talks involving conciliation service ACAS led to the new offer.

And a dispute at Tower Colliery in south Wales was resolved after production had been halted for a day at the worker-owned pit. The dispute had been over moving two men from the coal face.