Govia High Court Ruling: Southern Rail Strikes
More news on the Southern rail strikes today, as Govia have taken desperate measures to try and stop the drivers’ strike. Govia have now gone to the High Court, in a last ditch attempt to put a halt to the chaos engulfing the company.
Govia have gone to court under the basis that they believe the strikes breach customers’ rights. Whether they have a case, will be decided at 14:00 GMT today (Thursday) as the result of the hearing will be announced. A separate Southern strike is already underway, and moves into its 2nd day today. Along with this, Aslef members have refused to take any overtime, meaning that (combined with the strike action), approximately half of all Southern services were cancelled on Tuesday 6th.
At the moment, it looks as if the dispute is set to run well into and beyond the Christmas period. The Aslef strike is set to go ahead next Tuesday; the result of this would be that Southern customers’ will find themselves without any trains at all in areas where only Southern trains run.
Southern have again spoken out on the issue, claiming that they have led the way in trying to resolve the problems, but that RMT are refusing to negotiate or engage in serious discussions with them or Govia. The RMT responded to this by claiming that Southern haven’t spoken to the RMT in several months, and that they wouldn’t be stopping the strike until their demands are met.
Unfortunately, readers, it doesn’t look as if this one is going to be solved anytime soon. We’ll keep you posted.