RMT warns against disastrous work intensification and wage restraint on public sector workers

"We cannot have a situation where productivity is debased into meaning trading work intensification for pay" - says RMT Gen Sec Eddie Dempsey

22 Oct 2025| News

Rail union RMT has warned the government against using flawed productivity measures and wage restraint for railway workers.

The union has said that linking any pay offer above CPI to so-called “productivity savings” from staff is a dangerous approach that risks repeating the mistakes of austerity and undermining the railway’s long-term future.

RMT is challenging claims that staff costs are to blame for falling productivity. The union says official figures ignore major structural problems in the industry, such as the ongoing costs of outsourcing, leasing charges, and private debt, while focusing narrowly on labour inputs to push a political agenda.

In a letter to Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander, RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey wrote:

It would be disastrous, in my view, for the Labour government to impose work intensification and wage restraint on public sector workers using productivity measures that are not fit for purpose and reinforcing a bogus right-wing narrative about public sector inefficiency.

My union is not afraid of productivity discussions. Far from it. We are keen to engage with your government on our own ideas for the industry’s future. We have our own suggestions for increasing the efficiency of spending on rail, for tackling the low productivity of parts of the railway and for how to increase output.

Mr Dempsey added:

We’re ambitious for rail, and we see an integrated, publicly owned railway playing a key role in driving wider productivity growth in our economy.

But we cannot have a situation where productivity is debased into meaning trading work intensification for pay.

He continued:

That is not real productivity, it’s another version of the doom spiral characteristic of the debate around austerity cuts and it will be just as damaging to the real base of productivity growth as those cuts were to the economy.

According to Dempsey, the real drag on rail productivity has come as a result of disastrous fragmentation caused by privatisation, “Rail workers do their jobs, they are productive. Using their pay negotiations to con the public into thinking this will fix the industry’s problems is not the right approach.”