NEWS.CATEGORY: Industrial
TPE: 2025 Pay Talks - First Meeting and Offer
After several months of having pay meetings postponed, we finally met with representatives of TPE on Monday 2nd of June to negotiate on pay at the Joint Negotiating Forum (JNF).
At the outset they advised that they didn’t have the mandate to negotiate on the majority of what was in the respective trade unions Pay claims. The offer was a no strings offer of February’s Consumer Prices Index (CPI) of 2.8% with the potential to bolster the deal with productivity savings, up to a maximum of 3.4% which represented February’s Retail Prices Index (RPI), RPI being the normal measure of inflation that TSSA recognises as a starting point for pay talks for a no strings deal.
The company seemed keen to then separate from the single table talks with all of the unions at JNF level and enter into talks with each trade union to negotiate on productivity savings. However, whilst we weren’t happy with the initial offer we asked the company to outline what productivity savings they had considered. As it was clear that they must have some thoughts on this given the months of waiting for talks to take place.
After several adjournments the company came back and states that the 5 areas they were looking to examine productivity on to fund the additional 0.6% were as follows:
- A move to Electronic payslips for all staff
- The ability to have phone appointments for medicals for certain types of appointments
- For CX staff to have body worn cameras as part of the standard kit
- For a cessation of Technology payments going forward
- For suitably trained staff to be able to deploy ramps (other than Drivers).
TSSA raised concerns that the value of something like preventing technology payments being paid in the future alone could be worth more than the 0.6% that they were looking to secure from these items and raised concerns about the level of detail needed to understand whether our members could accept the above. TSSA reminded them that our members had completed a survey in order to help us formulate our pay claim (TSSA members can click here to access the full claim) and we suspected that you would see this offer as far below your expectations when we had asked for items like a Minimum pay increase of £3850, or to reanalyse basic pay based on similar roles within the industry for instance. We also asked for clarity on whether this offer was a smorgasbord for us to choose from or whether they intended that all of the items would equate to the 0.6% particularly as some of the items impacted on different grades. The indication seemed to be that it was a smorgasbord however all the unions asked for the company to put the offer in writing for us to take away and consider.
A meeting that same afternoon (2nd June) had been arranged hastily the previous week to negotiate on the Management Grades pay but following the JNF meeting outlined above that meeting was postponed by the company as not all the directors they felt should be in attendance were available! TSSA did ask for it to go ahead despite this but the company declined. However, as we suspected that the same offer or similar would have been made to Management Grades I wrote to the company asking them to put their offer in writing to us for Management Grades as well.
At the time of writing we had received the offer letter in relation to the General Grades but no offer letter for the Management Grades or any response to the email requesting this has been received. Once we have a clearer picture of what is on the table for all of our members in TPE we will of course be able to feed back to members accordingly.
To be clear the offer made to the general grades is as follows and only had 3 proposed productivity measures contained within it, any references to TPT refer to TransPennine Trains Limited, which is the employers legal entity name:
“Further to our joint meeting today, 2nd June 2025, this letter sets out TPT’s proposal in principle in respect of
the 2025/2026 pay award (pay anniversary 1st April 2025), aligned with established collective bargaining
arrangements under TransPennine Trains (TPT) Procedure Agreement 1.
These proposals have been made following consideration of your respective pay claim submissions, internal consultations and are subject to a mandate from the Department for Transport (DfT). The company proposes the following:
Option A - Base Offer
2.8% increase on basic pay (February 2025 CPI) with no conditions attached.
Option B - Enhanced Offer
In our meeting TPT proposed that we move into separate discussions with each respective trade union to formulate proposals for an enhanced offer up to 3.4% (February 2025 RPI). During the meeting, the preference was expressed to continue as a single discussion and thus, also taking into account feedback during the meeting, TPT makes the following pan-grade proposal:
3.4% increase on basic pay, contingent upon agreement to the following:
1. Mandatory electronic delivery of payslips, P60 and P45 forms for all employees.
2. Acceptance of telephone-based occupational health assessments (telephone medicals) where clinically appropriate.
3. No additional or one-off payments for the future implementation or use of new technology.
These are headline conceptual proposals and would be subject to fuller definition as part of our further discussions.
Next Steps
This is not a final offer, but an in principle proposal and is subject to final endorsement from the DfT. We remain open to further dialogue with the ASLEF, RMT and TSSA and welcome and await any feedback or suggestions ahead of any further negotiations, should they be required.”
Management grades collective bargaining
We have recently signed off on 2 new collective bargaining agreements that give populations of Managers a voice within the company by being able to elect their own TSSA representatives.
There are many other groups of Managers within TPE who won’t have a voice or collective representation in any future changes to the industry in relation to the formation of Great British Railway and any TUPE transfer or Reorganisations that might be created from those measures. Equally we believe that all Railway colleagues should have the ability to elect their own TSSA representatives to speak up on their behalf and seek to improve terms and conditions.
The recent successes have been achieved by us demonstrating the majority of Staff within a grouping of colleagues desired collective bargaining by being members of TSSA, so please talk to your colleagues and encourage them to join at www.tssa.org.uk/join
For more information on the recent Collective Bargaining agreements being singed please see the links below:
TSSA signs Collective Bargaining agreement for Operational Managers (Driver Managers, Operational Development Managers and Driver Operations Manager) - https://www.tssa.org.uk/news-and-events/tssa-news/tssa-signs-collective-bargaining-agreement-for-operational-managers
TRU Customer Delivery Collective Bargaining agreement with TSSA (Customer Delivery Managers and Senior Customer Delivery Managers) –