Over the next six years train operating companies are embarking upon a new programme of cost-cutting (refer to the McNulty report http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/12658.aspx) that could see:

• over 20,000 railway jobs put at risk,
• the closure of 675 ticket offices and
• a 50 per cent increase in the number of unstaffed stations.

Train companies are driving through the cuts in an attempt to find £3.5bn in efficiency savings by 2019, as requested by the government.

If the cuts go ahead one in ten staff currently working on the railways – including train guards, maintenance workers, and ticket office staff – could lose their jobs and around three-quarters of all the UK’s railway stations could become unstaffed.

This is not a case of creating a million climate jobs but of saving 20,000 Climate Jobs. The better and more attractive the railway service, the easier it will be to get people off the roads and to stop catching planes to places within the UK like Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Therefore Derby climate Coalition supports the TUC led  Action for Rail campaign.