News from Northern Rail's Regional Community Manager:
I am writing to let you know that RMT has agreed to suspend its strike action and recommence talks about the future role of the conductor. This follows positive discussions between RMT and Northern - brokered by ACAS Chair, Sir Brendan Barber. This is really good news for customers and businesses across the North.
We warmly welcome RMT’s decision to suspend its strike action and recommence talks about what the future role of the conductor looks like. We have been very clear in these discussions that there will be a conductor on all our trains now and into the future. We are looking forward to further positive talks with RMT about operational models moving ahead so that we can resolve their dispute and bring it to an end. The suspension of the RMT strikes is good news for customers and businesses across the North.
Changing a strike timetable back to a normal timetable is a very complex task. It is unfortunately too late for Northern to reintroduce a full timetable in time for this Saturday (Feb 9). We will run about 700 services with few services running after 5pm. We advise customers to check before they travel. From Saturday Feb 16, we are pleased to confirm that we will be running a full Saturday timetable.
I hope to update you on the progress of our dialogue with RMT in due course.
