- Aslef chief Mick Whelan is said to have accepted Avanti’s offer instantly
Train drivers’ average annual salaries could rise to almost £100,000 after a deal was agreed to end a long-running dispute at one of the biggest rail franchises.
Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, is said to have instantly accepted Avanti West Coast’s offer, which comes as more strikes loom.
The deal – which will be funded by taxpayers – has been signed off by the Department for Transport, according to Whitehall sources.
The company will pay a flat £600 payment per extra shift on top of each driver’s contracted four-day week, for which they receive an average salary of around £70,000.
Transport officials are said to be keen to resolve the dispute about overtime working at the company, which has dragged on for more than 18 months.
The row has seen Avanti’s West Coast Main Line service beset by cancellations and cuts to service frequencies due to shortage of drivers. A similar dispute about overtime working at TransPennine Express has also reportedly been resolved.
However, multiple rail franchises are still due to strike early next month, bringing chaos to the end of the Easter school holidays.
Aslef says its members have not had a pay rise since 2019 – although the industry average of £67,000 for a four-day week is nearly double average pay of £34,000.
The overtime agreement at Avanti will last for 12 months and is set to dramatically reduce cancellations due to driver shortages.
Unofficial figures indicate the company cancelled 3,996 services and part-cancelled a further 2,327 over the 11 months to the start of March 2024 – around three times higher than when the West Coast Main Line was operated by Virgin Trains, The Sunday Times reported.
Last Thursday, rail minister Huw Merriman told the House of Commons progress was needed to change ‘restrictive’ contracts in the industry, some of which have not been altered for decades. He said one deal was agreed with unions in 1997 and only intended to run five years.
He told MPs: ‘Until we can make progress on restrictive contracts, we will not be able to make changes.’
Mr Merriman added: ‘There are technical reasons why operators are not working and it comes back to the need to be able to manage their workforce and that’s why we need reforms.’
An Avanti spokesman said: ‘We are pleased to reach agreement on rest day working… It will help ensure our services are more reliable and resilient while we continue training our drivers on our brand-new trains.’
A rail industry source yesterday said the offer accepted by Aslef at Avanti is ‘similar to those in place elsewhere on the railway’.
Conservative MP Greg Smith, a member of the Commons transport committee, called the payments ‘totally outrageous’, when the company received taxpayer subsidies of £445million in two years to 2023.
He said: ‘A private business can do what it wants but if the taxpayer is stepping in to reward failure, there’s going to be a lot of eyebrows raised from people who have to pay that money when they are already paying extortionate fares to ride on a railway that isn’t very reliable.
‘People are going to be very angry about this.’
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