RAIL workers staged a protest outside a conference of industry bosses and politicians in Leeds yesterday.

The National Rail Conference at the city’s Queens Hotel was picketed by members of RMT.

The union is fighting to protect jobs and safety, which are under threat from new franchises to be awarded to operators of rail services in the north of England. RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “Thousands of decent rail jobs will be under threat, deskilled and casualised. Cuts to rail jobs are always a false economy and make a nonsense of the government’s hot air about a ‘northern powerhouse’.”

The union has leafleted thousands of passengers at dozens of stations in the north warning them of the dangers of the new franchises.