Southern Railway is now facing a big problem that has been affecting their customers. Brought by the Govia Thameslink Railway train operating company, is having a hard time executing their full services. The company also received so many complaints for quite some time now due to the current issues the company is facing.
According to reports by BBC News and Sky News, Southern Railway's daily operations and services are greatly affected by the series of strikes against the company. These strikes are led by the Aslef and RMT unions. The Aslef union is against driver-only trains while the RMT union is having issues with regards to train conductor's role. The unions' members are ideally going on a week-long strike including Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday of this week along with walkout plans for January 9 to 14.
The company already asked the government's Court of Appeals to reconsider the court's decision of not banning the strike. However, even if the Court of Appeals reconsider banning the strike, operations are now greatly affected and it would be difficult for the railway to get back on track. Because of this chaos, Southern Railways have been advising passengers not to travel for the time being. Southern also said that train operations would be halted for Wednesday and Friday due to the scheduled walkouts.
The company has received tons of complaints and negative feedbacks due to the strike. According to a constituent among the areas affected, Amber Rudd, "It is totally unacceptable that our local area and communities will suffer further strikes over driver-only operated trains when they already run safely across much of the UK network, and when current staff will take home the same pay following the changes proposed by the train company."
Tons of employees' and business people's jobs have been affected due to the unavailability of the trains and its services. As said by Charles Horton, the chief executive of Govia Thameslink Railway, "Our passengers have suffered months of travel misery and we call again on the unions to call off their action and work with us to find a resolution to their dispute."
