THOUSANDS of commuters face delays today because of a strike by Glasgow Subway staff over pay and holiday rosters.
The industrial action was taking place after last-minute talks between the Transport and General Workers' Union (T&G) and Strathclyde Passenger Transport (SPT) ended without agreement.
Officials of SPT, which operates the Subway, said the new deal offered staff an immediate 7.9-per cent pay rise, with a further 1.5-per cent once new holiday rosters were introduced.
The dispute, which has led to two one-day strikes already, involves drivers, ticket collectors and safety workers, and began after employees rejected a two-year pay offer and objected to changes in holiday cycles.
Douglas Ferguson, SPT's director of operations, said:
"This offer is significantly more than that available to other employees in local government.
"I am very disappointed that the trade union representatives decided that another strike was required to put this offer to their members.
"This is a very generous but final offer and it can only be paid for through improvements in flexibility and productivity. I encourage staff to carefully consider what is on the table and to accept it. Further strikes will also compromise our ability to fund any offer."
The break-down in talks spells another 24 hours of disruption for the 41,000 commuters who use the Glasgow subway each day.
SPT said it was hoping to run a limited underground shuttle today between the Buchanan Street and Hillhead stations.
Free buses will be available every 10 minutes between Shields Road and St Enoch, and Partick and Govan.
T&G officials said the pay increases and changes to terms and conditions did not meet the needs of its members. Scott Foley, of T&G Scotland, said:
"A large amount of effort has gone into trying to resolve this dispute, and our members themselves have identified further savings based on financial data produced by SPT.
"Talks have, however, become increasingly protracted as a consequence of management's inconsistent figures, which following analysis by our shop stewards have been met with a response that they just don't add up.
"The T&G has worked with the figures given to us by SPT and has identified substantial savings which we believe would be achievable due to the increased productivity and flexibility of the workforce.
"Our members are frustrated and feel they are being asked to agree to a deal in which they are not being properly rewarded for a major departure from existing working practices."
Mr Foley said they were still committed to ending the dispute and will meet again today.
Subway drivers currently earn pounds-16,801 basic salary for a 37-hour week, with roughly pounds-2000 extra earnings including overtime and bonuses.
REPLACEMENT SERVICES A limited train shuttle service is planned between Hillhead and Buchanan Street.
Free buses will run every 10 minutes from 6.30am to 11.30pm between Shields Road and St Enoch stations, and Partick and Govan.
First ScotRail will accept Subway season and multijourney tickets for travel between Queen Street and Partick.
Subway car parks will be free. Season ticket holders will be reimbursed for journeys lost during the strike if they present their ticket at a Subway station after the dispute.
The fare increase, due this month, is suspended while services are disrupted.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article