Pressure grows on Mick Lynch to accept pay deal as it emerges 250 rail staff earn at least £100,000 a year

• Some 250 signallers and track engineers earn at least £100,000, figures show
• Meanwhile another 650 at Network Rail earned more than £80,000 this year
• Industry figures show a quarter of track maintenance staff earn £60,000-plus 

Pressure was growing on Mick Lynch today to accept a pay deal as it emerged that 250 signallers and track engineers earn at least £100,000.

Industry figures reveal that the workers, who are represented by Mr Lynch’s RMT union, took home the bumper pay packets in the year to September.

Another 650 at Network Rail earned more than £80,000. And a quarter of track maintenance staff are on £60,000-plus – more than double the £27,055 given to a newly qualified nurse.

Obtained by the Mail under the Freedom of Information Act, the figures show that average earnings for a signaller were just under £56,000 and £50,000 for track maintenance staff. They include base salary, overtime, rest day working and allowances for unsociable hours.

Mick Lynch was once again manning the picket line as 40,000 rail workers walked out on Friday

A traveller walks through the concourse during a rail workers’ strike over pay and terms, at Waterloo Station in London

Around 80 per cent of the 20,000 or so track maintenance workers and signallers at Network Rail are members of the RMT.

MPs last night said the findings made ‘a mockery’ of Mr Lynch’s claims that his members were on the breadline.

They said the figures also undermined his claims that his strikes, which are costing the economy billions, are not about class war or trying to bring down the Government.

Mr Lynch has rejected a 9 per cent pay offer from Network Rail, a deal that has been accepted by the TSSA union.

It is worth double digits over two years for the lowest paid.

Unite, which represents electrical control room operators, backed a similar deal this week and has withdrawn strike action. But the RMT wants rises in line with inflation, currently around 11 per cent.

Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘Most people would consider these earnings pretty high. People are beginning to realise that this is just a politically motivated strike because Mr Lynch also rather likes being in the media.

‘If the average wage is £50,000 for the people he represents, when the average wage in the country is £30,000-odd, then clearly his members are doing much better than the average worker and it’s unfair to ask them to pay for inflation-level pay demands.’

Members of the RTM are on a 48-hour walkout again today in their latest strike action

Tory MP Chris Loder, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: ‘This makes a mockery of Mick Lynch’s claims that this strike isn’t politically motivated. The mask is slipping and he should settle.

‘A union members’ mutiny is coming if he doesn’t call off these strikes. The hardworking union members have had enough of being used as the hard-Left’s political pawns.’

This week the Mail revealed that some workers will have lost more than £4,000 by January due to the strikes, which started in June.

Mr Lynch is facing a mutiny from a growing number of his members after around a fifth of those work for Network Rail – around 4,000 – defied the first 48-hour strike this week. This is double the number who did so when the strikes began.

RMT workers started their second 48-hour strike this week, with only around a fifth of services running today and tomorrow. Large swathes of rural areas have been completely cut off.

RMT union strikers at Manchester Piccadilly station Picket Line on Friday, December 16

In a glimmer of hope that a breakthrough can be found, Mr Lynch today said he hoped a ‘compromise’ could be struck in the coming days as he softened his tone.

He held crunch talks with industry leaders and ministers last night and said there would be further talks ‘in order to find resolutions’.

If the bitter six-month dispute finally ends, two further 48-hour walkouts over January 3-4 and 6-7 could be avoided.

However, the deadline for avoiding chaos on Christmas Eve passes tonight because train operators have to roster staff such as drivers a week in advance. RMT workers will strike from 6pm on Christmas Eve until 6am on December 27.

Mr Lynch told Sky News: ‘Resolutions to disputes are about compromises. We understand what the companies want and they understand what we need.

‘So we need some compromise on some of the conditions they’re putting on the offer. And we’ll need an improvement in the payoff.

‘But that is achievable in my view and in the view of my negotiating team.’

Calling on Tory ministers to ‘facilitate’ a better offer from train firms, he added: ‘If they can come towards us a little bit, we can maybe work up some solutions.’

Strikers turned out to man the picket lines despite poor weather at Dover Priory Station, Kent

Platforms were left deserted across many of the UK’s stations on Friday, despite the busy Christmas season being well underway

RMT union boss Mick Lynch (left) with a union official on a picket line outside Euston train station this week

One sticking point is with 14 train operators covering most of the country, also involved in the dispute, which want driver-only operation trains to be further rolled out across the network. The demand was inserted into the pay offer by ministers at the 11th hour.

A Downing Street spokesman yesterday refused to say whether the Government was willing to drop the DOO demand, saying ‘we do need to see modernisation’ in return for pay rises.

He added: ‘It remains our position that we want an agreement to be reached. We think there’s a fair and generous deal on the table, but we’ve been clear that we want to see parties work to try to reach an agreement.’

The RMT industrial action also involves a ban on overtime between Sunday and January 2.

Several operators rely on extra hours to run a full timetable, meaning there could be hundreds of last-minute cancellations. By January 9, there will have been a month of chaos on the railways, either through strikes or engineering works.

An RMT spokesman said ‘most’ of its members were on basic salaries of around £31,000 but didn’t dispute that many have total earnings much higher than this once they’ve been topped up with overtime and bonuses.

They added: ‘Some members do have decent salaries due to being highly trained, safety critical workers. However, many Network Rail members and staff working for the train companies have very low salaries, some as little as £18,000 a year.

‘This dispute is about securing a negotiated package on job security, pay and working conditions for railway workers.’

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