Relief for travellers as strike suspended

THE apparent breakthrough in the stand-off between rail signal staff and employers in Scotland was a welcome relief for travellers who suffered as a result of the walkout earlier in the week.

The prospect of a second 24-hour strike would have meant disruption spread over four days. Coming at a time of the worst financial crisis in living memory, when many people fear for their jobs and homes, the staff rotas of signallers hardly register with the general public.

However, it is always the public who are made to suffer when public service staff go into a dispute. We have a long history of this in Britain, of course, so the travelling public soldiers on in stoic fashion.

It is not in the interests of the business community either, in the current economic climate, for a damaging rail strike to continue.

Both sides have had the sense to keep on talking so that the unions felt they had achieved enough progress to suspend the second planned strike.

Scottish travellers are especially vulnerable to disputes of this kind because of the distances involved and their reliance on the train. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this dispute are, both sides must keep this fact uppermost in their minds.