Tory Grant Shapps warns he’ll FORCE through rail changes against striking workers’ will

Tory Grant Shapps today warned he is preparing to force through huge overhauls to the rail network against the will of striking workers.

The Transport Secretary said he is “moving to” the idea of “imposing” reforms on staff – claiming rail unions were failing to consult properly on them.

Reforms proposed by Mr Shapps range from making Sunday working compulsory to shuttering hundreds of ticket offices and getting rid of track engineers.

It was not immediately clear which measures he was talking about forcing through and when. But he warned he could use “a section 188”.

Section 188 of the Trade Union Act says a boss can break rules on making people redundant if “special circumstances render it not reasonably practicable for the employer to comply”.

The move will enrage unions, who believe rail workers would effectively be “fired and rehired” if Sunday working was made mandatory against their will.

Mr Shapps told Sky News: “The deal that is on the table actually means largely no compulsory redundancies at all.

“If (the unions) are not prepared to put that deal to your membership we will never know whether members would accept it.

“What I do know and I can say for sure is if we can’t get this settled in the way that we are proposing, which is ‘please put the deal to your membership’ then we will have to move to what is called a section 188; it is a process of actually requiring these changes to go into place so it becomes mandated.

“That is the direction that this is moving in now.”

It came as rail union leaders warned the long-running dispute over pay, jobs and conditions will continue “for as long as it takes”.

A fresh strike caused travel chaos on Thursday as tens of thousands of members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT), Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) and Unite walked out, affecting Network Rail and train operators across the country.

Only around one in five trains ran, with some areas having no services all day.

Another strike will be held on Saturday while RMT members on London Underground and London Overground, and some bus drivers in the capital in Unite, are taking industrial action today.

Unions continued to blame Transport Secretary Grant Shapps for the deadlocked rail dispute.

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT, has written to the Transport Secretary, saying: “Your Government has made the decision to use taxpayer’s money to bail out private train companies from being liable for revenue lost because of industrial action on the condition the same companies comply with Government instructions to hold down pay, cut thousands of safety critical rail jobs, introduce Driver Only Trains and close ticket offices across the network.”

Mr Lynch said that the union has calculated that, including the previous and forthcoming industrial action, over £120m of taxpayers’ money had been used to “bail out” private train companies.

Mr Shapps said Sunday rest days were based on a law that was a century old.

He added: “If we can’t get those modernisations in place we will have to impose those modernisations but we would much rather do it through these offers actually being put to their members.”