Virgin XC guards set new strike dates in Sunday pay dispute
RMT: July 26 2006
RMT GUARDS working for Virgin Cross Country are to strike for 48 hours from a minute after midnight on Friday, July 28, after rejecting a ?wholly inadequate? offer from the company on the long-running dispute over Sunday pay rates.
The more than 300 guards, who have already held 12 days of strike action in the dispute, rejected the company's latest proposal by 135 votes to 33.
"Despite our best efforts the company has refused to negotiate sensibly and our members have decisively rejected the company's wholly inadequate proposals," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.
"This is a dispute that could and should have been settled for just £6 per Sunday shift many months ago, but the Virgin board vetoed the deal we negotiated in good faith last spring.
"Since then they have prevaricated and even demanded that the company receive an equal share of productivity savings they want to squeeze from our members by tampering with booking-off times.
"That has made negotiating difficult enough, but they have also produced figures that frankly bear no relation to reality and we have reached the stage where our members' patience has once more run out and further action is the only choice left.
"We have told the company that our members will not book on for shifts that commence between 00:01 on Friday July 28 and 23:59 on Saturday July 29.
"It is time that Virgin dropped their confrontational approach and started negotiating genuinely to find a solution," Bob Crow said.