Lynch told Sky News the day before that trading should have taken place in December, when the retail price index, an indicator of inflation, was around 7%. Since then, the annual rate in April has skyrocketed to 11.1%, the highest since 1982. The latest wage increases offered by railroad operators are much lower.
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In a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Johnson accused RMT and said the union wanted to force passengers to raise unacceptable fares and maintain labor practices dating back to the Victorian era.
“To sit with a network rail or railroad company and survive it, you need a baron of the union,” the prime minister said. “We need to be prepared to continue the course. In order to maintain the course, these reforms, these improvements in the way we operate our railways, will benefit travelers.”
Mr Johnson’s Minister of Transport Grant Shapps dismissed the strike as a “stunt.” “It won’t solve anything. In fact, things will get worse,” he told Sky News when the government intervened in the negotiations.
Signs of turmoil surged on Tuesday morning. At Klapam Junction in South London, passengers waiting for the train to Gatwick Airport said they took an extra hour to board the plane.
“I had to get up at 6:30 this morning for a 3 pm flight,” said 24-year-old Tim Treadwin, who was working at a florist and flying to New York for a vacation. At work, he said, because he knew that many were working from home, many customers called for cancellation of office deliveries in the days leading up to the strike.
