TRAIN passengers in The Herald area will be hoping that the current crisis talks at South West Trains (SWT) will prove successful after guards threatened to strike next month.
The RMT has planned strikes on May 3 and May 11 following a breakdown in industrial relations that has resulted in 38 per cent of RMT-affiliated guards voting for action in a recent ballot.
At issue is the refusals by guards to wear waistcoats, contention over the compulsory wearing of name tags, which they argue may identify them to hostile customers, and a claim by the RMT that guards are not being given enough opportunity to learn to become train drivers.
Another main area of discontent relates to SWT's "managing for absence" policy, which requires any worker who has been absent from work to explain the reason why to a superior member of staff immediately upon return.
While management claims that this is to determine if there is a genuine problem with a worker, many guards feel the policy is too strict.
A spokeswoman for SWT said that it was still not decided whether the strikes would definitely go ahead and how these would affect train services.