RMT announced further strike action today, as well as an overtime ban in the ongoing battle with bosses over pay, job security and working conditions.
Rail union RMT will take nationwide strike action across the railways on March 16 after employers refused to put any new offers on the table.
The union, which represents 40,000 workers across Network Rail and 14 train operators, rejected offers from employers last week, as they did not meet the needs of members on pay, job security or working conditions.
Unions warn of further action as nurses and ambulance workers down tools in biggest-ever walkout
Workers on the picket line outside Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton during a strike by nurses and ambulance staff
A“CONSTANT cycle of national NHS pay strikes will continue for as long as it takes,” unions warned today, as tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance workers downed tools in the biggest-ever health service walkout.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which began a 48-hour strike, said members at 73 health trusts across England withdrew their labour — a massive increase on the 44 that saw action in December’s first walkout.
Unite and GMB paramedics, call handlers and other staff at ambulance trusts also joined the massive industrial action, which NHS leaders said caused “huge disruption.”
Ahead of further strikes by physiotherapists on Thursday and ambulance staff — including Unison members — on Friday, union leaders urged Tory ministers to act on years of falling take-home wages, saying the situation is driving a worker exodus and endangering patient safety.
Energy companies received more than 140,000 complaints about their treatment of customers in debt last year alone, openDemocracy can reveal.
They included 33,000 complaints about the fitting or disconnecting of pre-payment meters.
Yet the energy regulator Ofgem was only forced into action this week when an undercover Times investigation found British Gas had sent bailiffs to break into vulnerable people’s homes and fit the meters by force. It has now asked energy companies to pause the practice.
The data, obtained by openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request, has revealed for the first time the scale of alleged mistreatment of vulnerable customers since the energy price cap was first hiked in April.
“Ofgem has known about this crisis for years, and so have the companies themselves. Suppliers are not being honest when they act like they’ve just discovered it and they’re shocked, like the CEO of Centrica did yesterday,” Ruth London, co-founder of the Fuel Poverty Action campaign group, told openDemocracy.
Energy companies are required to report the number of complaints they receive from customers every month to Ofgem. Between January and October last year, they received 146,046 complaints related to disconnection and debt issues – though Ofgem has refused to tell us which suppliers received the most.
The category includes complaints from customers about their energy supply being disconnected or having a prepayment meter installed forcibly without a warrant or despite them being vulnerable.
Other examples of complaints include customers being disconnected by error or without due process and being put on debt repayment plans that are unsuitable or unaffordable.
The true number of people being ill-treated is likely to be much higher. Ofgem revealed yesterday that customers were being left on hold for hours by energy companies, leading to more than half hanging up before they could report an issue.
Ofgem said revealing how many complaints different companies had received would breach Section 105 of the 2000 Utilities Act, which states that the public disclosure of information companies supply to the regulator is prohibited in order to protect national security. The law has previously been criticised for preventing whistleblowers from raising issues about the energy sector that are in the public interest.
The regulator said yesterday that it was “unacceptable” to forcibly install prepayment meters before all other options had been exhausted, and has launched an urgent investigation into British Gas.
But charities have criticised the regulator for ignoring calls to end the practice for months.
“Lives have been and are being lost because of their silence and refusal to act on the truth they have long known,” said London.
Clare Moriarty, the chief executive of Citizens Advice, said it “should not have taken this long” for Ofgem to act.
The charity said it saw more people unable to afford to top up their pre-payment metre last year than for the entirety of the previous decade combined.
The Times reported this week that British Gas customers who had prepayment meters forcibly installed included a woman in her 50s who the company’s bailiffs were told had severe mental health problems and a mother whose “daughter is disabled and has a hoist and electric wheelchair”.
The paper’s undercover investigation also alleged that the Arvato Financial Solutions employees were incentivised with bonuses to fit prepayment meters. The boss of British Gas owner Centrica apologised and said he was “disappointed, livid and gutted” on Thursday.
Peter Smith, policy director at the charity National Energy Action, said: “The recent announcement by major suppliers that they would temporarily pause forced installations of pre-payment meters is welcome, but this was prompted by public shaming of suppliers and there is still no market-wide ban.
“We also desperately need a coherent plan to help millions of people already trapped on prepayment meters. This means rewiring the energy market to provide more affordable tariffs and finding new ways to address the underlying debt issues which are rife due to soaring energy costs.”
Richard Lane, Director of External Affairs at StepChange Debt Charity, said: “We welcome Ofgem’s move to suspend the forced installation of prepayment meters (PPMs), but it’s clear that thousands of households have been struggling with energy bills for some time now, which is evident in our own client data.
“For the people that have already been moved onto PPMs, there must be better protection to prevent self-disconnection and extreme energy rationing.”
Half a million workers down tools over pay, jobs and working conditions
Protesters outside Downing Street, London, demonstrating against the new law on strikes
BRITAIN faces its biggest day of strike action in more than a decade today as up to half a million workers down tools over pay, jobs and working conditions.
Teachers, lecturers, civil servants and train and bus drivers are set to withdraw their labour simultaneously, as the fightback against more than a decade of Tory austerity gathers pace.
The TUC is holding events nationwide as part of its “protect the right to strike day” after ministers rushed “authoritarian and draconian” anti-worker legislation through the Commons on Monday night.
The union body demanded the government drop the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, which is likely to face stiff opposition in the House of Lords, and instead “get round the table to negotiate in good faith on public-sector pay.”
Members of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) on the picket line outside London’s St Thomas’ Hospital as they go on strike for the first time over pay
MORE than 50 human rights and civil liberties groups slammed the Tory government’s new anti-strike legislation today as an attack on the fundamental right to take industrial action.
An open letter, penned by groups including Liberty, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, said the proposals would allow “a further significant and unjustified intrusion by the state into the freedom of association and assembly.”
Ministers prepared to rush the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill through its final stages in the Commons last night, claiming public services need safeguarding amid the biggest strike wave in decades.
