ENGINEERS for train operator Southern will ballot on strike action over a “comprehensive breakdown in industrial relations,” rail union RMT announced yesterday.

The union said that Southern had arbitrarily imposed new shift rosters for 200 engineers, made a mockery of negotiating procedures, increased workloads and resorted to “intimidation and aggression.”

“RMT will not stand by while agreed policies, procedures and agreements are unilaterally ripped up by Southern,” said RMT general secretary Mick Cash.

“As a result we are now in dispute and will shortly begin a ballot of our engineering grades for industrial action.

“Southern is a company intensively under the spotlight over its performance at the moment and RMT will not have our members scapegoated for failures at the top by outrageous and intimidatory demands to meet impossible work targets and through attacks on working conditions.”