Rail bosses set for rough ride
Network Rail bosses are expected to face a series of tough questions later today, when they hold the company’s first annual general meeting (AGM).
The meeting in Glasgow will be the first chance for the not-for-profit company’s 116 members to hold bosses to account since they took over the running of the railways from Railtrack.
One member, Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT, has criticised the meeting before it has even begun. The union leader described the fact that the board is only due to meet up twice a year as a ‘token gesture’ to accountability. He wants a board with ‘teeth’ that represents passengers, workers and railway professionals.
Mr Crow has called on the executives of Network Rail to return the £1.8 million in bonuses paid to them. He argued that since one in ten services is to be cut they should make do with the 4.1% pay rise offered to his union’s membership.
“Network Rail should be leading by example – their executives could start by handing back the £1.8 million in bonuses they’ve just been handed, and accept the 4.1 per cent increase our members had to make do with,” he said. “We’re facing the threat of one in ten services facing the axe – that’s not efficiency, that’s madness.”
The RMT leader is expected to call for a merger between the Strategic Rail Authority and Network Rail into a ‘single, sensible railway body’. He believes putting the two together would be a sign that the Government was ‘serious’ about ‘sorting out the mess of privatisation’.
