HE mood music surrounding UK industrial relations heading into June didn’t inspire confidence in early resolutions and a summer of discontent seemed inevitable even before a week of rail disruption, including three full-day walk-outs, that brought much of the GB is apolitical, it is, as you would expect, passionately pro-rail. There is no winner from rail disruption, so we think both sides need to continue to talk to find a way forward. And that is why we were particularly dismayed to receive a blatantly adversarial and partisan press release from the DfT, which included the following lines attributed to the current transport secretary: “While union bosses waste time touring television studios and standing on picket lines, I am busy getting on with the job at hand and modernising our railway.”
