Deputy Editor Alan Young and Transport Correspondent Alastair Dalton talk about the ScotRail disruption
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin for Wednesday. I'm Alan Young, I'm
00:08Debt Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined today by our Transport Correspondent Alistair Dalton
00:12who's standing beside a railway line for a very specific reason. Hi Alistair.
00:17Good morning Alan.
00:19Let's have a look at the front page first then all will become clear. And there you
00:24go we splash on the latest disruption to hit ScotRail. From today an emergency timetable
00:30has come into force and this is due to an ongoing driver dispute, meaning there are
00:36fewer drivers volunteering to work overtime and causing huge disruption as we will hear
00:44in a minute. We picture on the front page there Sir Keir Starmer coming out of Downing
00:48Street surrounded by the new Scottish Labour piece. So Alistair I can see a train in the
00:57background there so at least one is running.
01:02Yes Alan I'm at Hindland station in the west end of Glasgow, one of ScotRail's busiest
01:09suburban stations where it's been less affected than some but it's for many passengers like
01:17those here at this station today it'll come as something of a groundhog day. It's just
01:23two years ago a very similar situation happened, a pay dispute initially involving drivers
01:29at ScotRail who rejected an offer, voted with their feet and stopped volunteering for overtime
01:38and it caused a lot of disruption forcing ScotRail to introduce a temporary kind of
01:44emergency timetable where they reduced the number of services they were running every
01:49day. They say to give people more certainty rather than cancelling things at short notice
01:56and this has cut the number of trains running by about a quarter, by about 600 trains a
02:02day, almost as many as the dispute two years ago. It means reduced frequencies on many
02:09routes like peak hours, peak hour trains on the main Edinburgh Glasgow line only running
02:15every half an hour rather than every 15 minutes and the last trains on some routes, some lesser
02:22used routes are earlier than normal up to perhaps three hours on a line from Glasgow
02:31to Dumfries. So yes and that's an indefinite timetable, we don't know how long that will
02:38continue. So what's behind this new dispute? Well it's a pay dispute, it's partly because
02:48ScotRail is now owned by the Scottish Government and therefore wages are subject to public
02:55sector controls and it means any additional increase has to be bargained with productivity
03:03improvements. That was the problem two years ago, it seems to be the same problem this
03:08year. There's no official dispute yet, we should emphasise that, although as left the
03:15main drivers union are expected to hold a strike ballot. The reason the disruption's
03:22happening is because ScotRail historically has relied on drivers working overtime on
03:28their days off to cover all the trains that need driven during the day. It's something
03:33the industry across Britain does. Now ScotRail want to phase that out but they've said that
03:40it will take until 2027 to remove the need to ask drivers to work when they're off and
03:49so drivers, as they did two years ago, can just stop volunteering for overtime and you
03:55get the cancellations and that's forced ScotRail to introduce this temporary timetable.
04:00Indeed, and obviously the disruption is making a lot of the headlines today but I can't say
04:08that you didn't tell them so because your story in June, which we can bring up now,
04:17there you go, apologies that we're reminding everyone of Scotland's Euros performance with
04:23that front page but your exclusive story there suggesting that more strikes are around
04:30the corner and we could well see this spreading across the country and into other unions as
04:39well.
04:40Yes, across Scotland, so far it's just as left who've indicated they're likely to be
04:45holding a strike ballot, that's the main drivers union, but the biggest union at ScotRail,
04:50the RMT, is also expected to announce today that it will be holding a strike ballot at
04:58ScotRail on similar grounds and in addition they are expected to hold a strike ballot
05:06at Caledonian Sleeper, that's the overnight trains between Scotland and London, the operator
05:12which is also owned by the Scottish Government so subject to public sector pay control, so
05:19expect to hear updates on scotland.com on that later.
05:25In the meantime I guess we're looking ahead to some pretty big events happening in Scotland
05:29as well and disruption as a result, not least the Scottish Open.
05:36The golf at Troon which starts a week later next week is expected to be the biggest such
05:45championship there.
05:48It's on a main line to air from Glasgow and I think a record crowd of 250,000 are expected
05:56so ScotRail say they're still trying to work out how to operate a service, they would normally
06:02operate extra trains, longer trains, we'll have to see the details of how they're going
06:07to handle that.
06:08Great, thanks very much for bringing us up to date on all that Alistair and we will have
06:13all the very latest as it develops throughout the day at scotsman.com and if you are on
06:18the site please do subscribe if you can and watch absolutely everything we do and if you're
06:24out and about today as ever please do pick up a copy of the paper but from me and from
06:29Alistair it's bye for now.