But now they have gone four years without a rise. Train drivers, as ministers frequently point out, get paid substantially more than nurses – in no small part, ironically, due to firms competing in a scarce market after privatisation. Until the government get train drivers in the same place, I don’t think they’ll be happy.” “We know that the pay rise they’ve offered nurses, if they take it, they’ll still be using food banks. That’s the only rationale I can put upon it. So, either they don’t want a solution, or they don’t want a solution while they’ve got other people out on strike. “They keep coming back with the same crap, knowing we’re going to refuse it. Like the RMT, Whelan claims that negotiators have rowed back from verbal offers to written proposals that knowingly breached Aslef’s red lines: “You would think it’s deliberate sabotage. “4% and 4% – I don’t think I could sell that even if it was a straight deal,” he says. Two “risible” sub-inflation offers have taken the union by surprise, lower rises than even those offered to the RMT and with demands for seven-day working on top. These days, Whelan has been cast as a man who can decide if the trains will run – although, he says, it is furious members who are pushing him harder. Old match tickets and a Chelsea gnome sit on his desk beside a book on Julian Assange pennants of campaigns supporting Colombian political prisoners and Ukrainian rail workers hang in front of a calendar stuck on July 2012, when Whelan was in his first year as general secretary. His office in Clerkenwell is cluttered with the paraphernalia of a Chelsea fan, albeit one leading an internationalist and socialist organisation. Whelan denies both, although perhaps objects more strenuously to the Ukraine accusations he breaks briefly into song for the chant London teams love to direct at Manchester United fans: “You only live round the corner!” Drivers will strike on 12 May, the eve of the Eurovision final in Liverpool, as well as on 31 May and FA Cup final day, 3 June – a set of dates that has led ministers and tabloids to accuse Whelan of targeting Ukrainians watching Eurovision and spiking the two Manchester teams’ day at Wembley. I’ve never dealt with such dissembling, deceitful, disingenuous, dishonourable people in my 38 years in this industryĪslef, which traditionally has been less inclined to strike than sister rail union RMT, is now at the forefront of the battle.
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