A combination of industrial action by ASLEF members and Hitachi staff is starting to bite harder on LNER, with increasing numbers of trains being cancelled.
The operator declined to tell RAIL how many trains it is cancelling due to the dispute, but RAIL analysis reveals that for the five weekdays in the last full week of February an average of 11 trains per day were cancelled.
This immediately followed four days of disruption due to a planned four-day engineering closure, south of Peterborough.
Responding to RAIL’s enquiry, LNER said: “Industrial action has been affecting one of our train service providers. Contingency plans have been enacted by the supplier and we are working with them. We continue to review the potential impact this may have on our services and will do everything we can to operate as many services as possible.”
While ASLEF has yet to announce further strikes in support of its ongoing national pay dispute with the 14 operators controlled by the Department for Transport, the action at LNER (over issues with rostering) is on top of this. Similar action is affecting Northern, with drivers at both companies due to strike on Friday March 1, plus an overtime ban from February 29 to March 2 (after this issue of RAIL went to press) adding to the pressure. LNER was planning to offer a skeleton service.
The Hitachi dispute, involving staff maintaining LNER’s Azuma fleet, featured eight days of discontinuous strikes from February 10-24 (RAIL 1003). This is affecting routine maintenance as well as train faults. In response, a number of trains are being swapped from nine/ten-car formations to shorter five-car trains.
As this issue of RAIL closed for press, there had been no movement in the national pay dispute with ASLEF, while the RM
