BRITAIN’S first national rail strike in over 20 years was back on yesterday, after reps rejected a new pay offer.

Members of rail union RMT will walk out for 24 hours from 5pm on Thursday June 4 and for 48 hours from 5pm on Tuesday June 9.

The union, along with the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), had suspended a planned strike over the spring bank holiday after Network Rail indicated it was prepared to give ground.

Bosses had previously offered a miserly non-consolidated £500 lump sum this year, followed by inflation-level pay rises for the next three years.

Returning to negotiations, they offered a two-year deal consisting of a 1 per cent rise this year and 1.4 per cent next year.

TSSA said the new deal represented a “major advance” as it promised no compulsory redundancies, which addressed another concern the unions had raised in the dispute.

Union official Lorraine Ward said: “With the expected cuts in the public sector from the new Tory government, our members were as much concerned about job security as they were about pay.”

TSSA is balloting members on the offer and will announce its decision on June 13.

But RMT, whose members voted for strike action by an 80 per cent margin on a 60 per cent turnout, said the offer “fails to recognise the massive pressures staff are working under … when the company is generating profits of £1 billion.”

General secretary Mick Cash said: “We have a massive mandate for action, which shows the anger of safety-critical staff across the rail network at attacks on their standards of living.

“The blunt truth is that this dispute could be settled for a fraction of the money being handed out in senior manager bonuses and to the train operators for not running services. That is a ludicrous situation which should never have been allowed to have arisen.”

Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne said: “I have always said that if we work together to realise these benefits, there is the possibility to increase pay.

“It is clearly unacceptable for the RMT to massively disrupt the travelling public with strike action when we are ready to continue talks.”