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RAIL workers at one of Britain’s top main-line intercity operators are balloting on action over threats to jobs and safety.
First Great Western (FGW) plans to introduce a new fleet of trains with no guards.
Drivers will be expected to open and close doors. Buffet cars will be ditched.
The super express trains (SET) are due in service in 2017.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union is campaigning against the plans and will ballot FGW’s 2,500 staff on industrial action.
They include drivers, guards and staff at 208 stations.
RMT general secretary Mick Cash said the union has been campaigning for months to fight plans that could lead to the axing of buffet cars, onboard staff and maintenance workers when the new trains are introduced.
The union has staged a series of events in response to FGW’s plans, which RMT argues would usher in an upstairs-downstairs service on intercity services while British passengers pay the highest fares in Europe.
Mr Cash said: “The company have now made it clear that they are ignoring RMT and are pressing ahead with proposals that will allow for driver-only operation and the removal of buffet cars and their replacement by a trolley-service-only catering facility, along with the sacking and reducing of the safety-critical operational role of train guards.
“That places us straight into a dispute and triggers the preparations for an industrial action ballot.”
FGW bosses confirmed that drivers would be in sole charge of doors on the new trains and that buffet cars would go.
Operations director Ben Rule said staff would be offered voluntary redundancy.
The new trains will replace 40-year-old high-speed trains on long-distance routes.
FGW says the new stock will help provide three million extra seats a year by December 2018, cutting journey times from London to Swansea by 20 minutes and by up to 17 minutes to Bristol.
The service operates 208 stations and serves 19 counties including from London’s Paddington station to west London and the Thames valley, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxford, the south-west, south coast and south Wales.
