Let's be clear . The scotrail 'strike' is not a strike. If employees don't want to work overtime that is their right. If you run a company so poorly that you rely on massive amounts of overtime from your staff to make things work, that is your issue as a business.

The government have given billions through covid to keep the railways running and they could have had some goodwill. I honestly think if they'd have made an offer of 3% it would have been accepted. Unfortunately they refused to really talk to companies or unions about pay. The train operators are now all on direct contracts so are completely reliant on dft decisions in terms of pay. I'm no fan of the rmt, but I don't think they had much of a choice here.

Hopefully an agreement can be made before strike action occurs. There is talk today that boris and the treasury are having a disagreement, boris wants to give a 5% rise, rishi says no.