Elizabeth line staff to vote on strike action in dispute over pay

Members of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) working on the Elizabeth Line will vote on strike action in the coming weeks.

The TSSA represents safety-critical workers including traffic managers and incident response managers.

Ballot papers are being issued to members today (Friday December 2) as part of a dispute over pay.

The union says the affected workers are paid significantly less than equivalent colleagues across the network.

Workers have been offered a 4% pay rise, but argue this is "significantly less" than other transport staff have received, such as DLR staff, who received 9.25%.

The union has also pointed out that workers at MTR, which is the outsourced part of the Elizabeth line, received an 8.2% increase this year, and staff at London Overground have been offered 6.5%.

Talks at the conciliation service Acas over recent weeks have failed to make a breakthrough.

Mel Taylor, TSSA Organiser, said: “The Elizabeth Line is a brilliant addition to London’s transport services.

“Our members have years of experience and work on the most modern railway in the country yet are paid significantly less than staff doing similar roles across the network – including colleagues on the very same line.

“These are first class services provided by first class workers with second class pay.

“Our members feel very strongly about their treatment when it comes to pay, but health and safety and the threat to pensions are also issues in this dispute.

“Low pay is leading to high staff turnover, lack of fully trained staff, and reliance on overtime to run core services.

“Strike action by these workers would bring services across the Elizabeth Line to a standstill. There’s no need for it to come to that if RfLI can see sense and produce a fair offer which doesn’t continue to leave their staff the poor relations of the network.”

The ballot will close on December 22.

Howard Smith, Director of the Elizabeth line, said: “Strikes are bad news for everyone, and we urge TSSA to work with us and avoid this industrial action.”