Members will be aware of the intransigence shown by the Government over the Pay offer made to you all in GWR and the other TOC’s. The pay offer that was tabled is significantly poorer to the one made to our members in Network rail where the £1750 underpin for 2022 means that some of the lowest paid are being offered more than 7% just in that year.

Furthermore, they have reversed assurances we received during negotiations aimed at protecting Ticket office jobs and not committed to include all management and controller members in the pay offer. Further talks have not yielded any improvement to that pay offer and so it is clear that the RDG and the government have to be made to sit up and take notice of the power of TSSA in GWR to ensure that they come back to the table with a sensible offer!

Whilst none of us want to be taking strike action we recognise that pressure needs to be brought to bear on GWR and the RDG to ensure that common sense prevails. With this in mind I met with your GWR Representatives on Monday, and they agreed unanimously that we would give notice to GWR of further strike action after Christmas. We are looking for a resounding response from members to send a clear message to GWR and the RDG that they need to come back to the table with a decent pay offer that we can put to members.

Strike Action

Members will be instructed not to commence work on any shift starting between:

12:00 on Wednesday 28^th December 2022 to 11:59 on Thursday 29^th December 2022

What if I'm due to start work before 12:00 (noon) on Wednesday 28^th December? If you are due to commence work on Wednesday 28^th December before noon then you should start and finish that period of work/shift, however if your work/shift commences at anytime within the period of strike action (between 12:00 noon 28 December and 11:59 Thursday 29^th December) then none of that work/shift should be carried out even if it is due to end after 11:59 on Thursday 29^th December.

This is in addition to the Action Short of Strike that has previously been called and is currently active running until 23:59 on Sunday 8^th January 2023 as advised in the previous communications to member which can be found by clicking here

Re-Ballot

It is extremely important that if you have received your ballot paper but not posted it yet that you get that in the post as soon as you can to avoid the delays due to Christmas post and the Postal Strikes, whatever you do please post it!

If You still haven’t received a ballot paper, then please email membership@tssa.org.uk

Management Grade Collective Bargaining

With the RDG currently refusing to cover Management grades in their last pay offer it has never been more important for Management graded colleagues to join TSSA so that we can make the argument for you to be covered by Collective bargaining. We have a framework with GWR that will enable this to happen, but it relies on us demonstrating that we have more than 50% +1 membership in a given grouping of managers i.e. Driver Managers, Engineering Managers, Train Planning, On Board Service Managers, Guards Managers etc.

Please encourage your management graded colleagues to join us today to help us get your collective bargaining rights back they can join TSSA online.

Also, any members joining us will add to the collective strength that we can wield in order to secure the best pay deal possible so encourage you colleagues who are not members to join today!