• UK rail strikes are impossible to avoid amid government debacle, union chief says.
• Manuel Cortes, the chairman of the TSSA union, stated that it will be more difficult to avert a wave of rail strikes in the UK this summer due to the government’s state of disarray.
• This indicated that he was unlikely to revisit the budget agreement reached in the fall of last year so that government agencies could afford more lavish compensation.

Manuel Cortes, the chairman of the TSSA union, stated on Wednesday that it will be more difficult to avert a wave of rail strikes in the UK this summer due to the government’s current state of disarray.

The TSSA, whose members include rail managers and supervisors in control centres, ticket officers, and station gatekeepers, will disclose the results of strike ballots about salary, job security, and working conditions at six train operating firms and Network Rail within the next week.

Its members at Avanti West Coast, Cross Country, and East Midlands have already voted in favour of strike action, and on Wednesday, the union planned to release the results of ballots at C2C, Northern, and LNER.

Following the first national strike in decades by the RMT union, which paralysed a significant portion of the British rail network, TSSA-led strikes would exacerbate the difficulties faced by British travellers this summer.

Aslef, the union representing train drivers, is also conducting a vote on national action, while the RMT is scheduled to resume negotiations with Network Rail and 13 train operating firms on Monday.

Cortes stated that no decisions had yet been made on the time or structure of any potential strikes and that the TSSA would continue to negotiate “till one minute before our members are scheduled to engage in industrial action.”

However, he stated that a 3% salary offer fell “far, way behind” his members’ expectations and that the chaos in Westminster would make it more difficult to achieve an agreement because railway operators were bargaining within “government-set constraints.”

“The government appears to be in disarray,” he added, adding that if the change of chancellor brought “any good change” to the Treasury’s position on funding for the railways, it would be welcome.

The chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, stated on Wednesday’s Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that his stance on public sector pay settlements to be published in the coming weeks will be guided by fiscal restraint in order to “tamp down the scourge of inflation.”