Return of beer and sandwiches?

This from Humber Business...

Rail union leaders are to hold a "crisis summit" with the Government to discuss a wave of job cuts as well as fare rises, it has been revealed.

Unions have been embroiled in increasing rows with rail firms over job cuts, ticket office closures and fares and will urge Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon to intervene during next Tuesday's meeting.

Massive national debt, taxes up and the Unions calling the shots. It's just like the old days!

Back to the future again

In the bad old days of British Rail the industry was rife with Spanish Practices.

For our younger readers these were "irregular or restrictive practices... not in accord with modern business practice" (Thanks Wikipedia).

Fortunately privitisation swept all this bad practice away and heralded a new dawn of partnership where the needs of the customer come first.

Therefore, The Fact Compiler was surprised to receive the following from a reader:

"Heard an excellent spanish practice from (Toc X) last week.

"Depot standbys can only be used to cover work at their home depot, so even if there is a cross cover agreement, the work has to be covered by the home depot.

"Result trains cancelled and passengers pissed off."

Thank goodness that sort of thing doesn't go on today. (Is this right? Ed)

New head of ACTU

Shaun Brady has been appointed acting General Secretary of the Associated Train Crew Union.

"We are not just about pay negotiations. We want to look at problems facing the industry and at ways to improve it." he said.

Shaun was previously General Secretary of ASLEF but after only 10 months in the role was dramatically suspended in May 2004, following an incident at the union's annual summer bash.

Railway Eye understands that there are no plans for an ACTU summer BBQ.

Unite unites

Unite - Britain's biggest union and well represented amongst railway engineering functions - is merging with the US-based United Steelworkers union (USW) to form Workers Uniting.

Unite was itself only formed last year when the Transport and General Workers Union merged with Amicus.

The new union will have three million members and will synchronise negotiations with multinational companies.

The merger agreement is to be signed in Las Vegas.

A choice of venue calculated to remind management that future negotiations will be played for much higher stakes.