TSSA promises to fight railway minimum service levels legislation

Transport and travel union – TSSA - is promising to fight “tooth and nail” against legislation announced by the Government which will see severe restrictions placed on the rights of transport workers across Britain. 

The Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill receives its first reading today (Thursday 20 October) and if passed will force unions to ensure ‘minimum’ service levels during periods of industrial action and will see thousands of workers face unfair dismissal for taking strike action.  

This follows months of travel disruption in which Train Operating Companies reported not having a government mandate to negotiate with unions, which led to wide scale industrial action over fair pay, jobs security and conditions. 

TSSA General Secretary, Manuel Cortes said: “The Tories are reverting to type with this new legislation. Now they have sunk the economy and lost control of inflation, they have decided that their top priority is to kamikaze workers' rights as well.  

“This is an outright attack on working people who are organising against the loss of purchasing power engineered by the Tories in the first place.

“We will fight tooth and nail any attempt to stop our members from exercising their human rights. The difference between a slave and a worker is the ability of the latter to withdraw their labour.”