FAT-CAT rail bosses are awarding themselves eye-watering annual pay rises while urging their staff to show “wage restraint,” RMT general secretary Mick Lynch charged today as tens of thousands of workers staged further strikes across the network. 

Up to three in five train services were cancelled as the transport union’s members at 14 train-operating companies walked out once again in their nine-month dispute over wages, jobs and conditions.

RMT is currently balloting workers on a new pay offer from state-run infrastructure firm Network Rail, but the dispute with employers’ body the Rail Delivery Group is “stuck in deadlock,” Mr Lynch said, after it threatened to make the union negotiate with each employer separately.

Bosses at seven rail operators, who claim that inflation-matching settlements are “unaffordable,” have given themselves annual pay rises of between 15 and 275 per cent, according to the union’s latest report.  

One — Matthew Gregory, chief executive of First Group, which runs “failing” Avanti West Coast and Transpennine Express — pocketed a 168 per cent increase in 2020-21.

The mammoth rise is more than 800 times higher than the wage award offered to rail workers last year, based on an average salary of £29,000, RMT said.

It added that government financial support since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020 means that private operators are set to make taxpayer-funded profits of a whopping £412 million by September. 

Mr Lynch said: “On the one hand ministers tell workers they must tighten their belts and on the other they are using taxpayer’s money to fund eye-watering pay rises and profits for the railway fat cats.

“This blatant unfairness will only reinforce our members’ determination.”

Meanwhile, most health unions urged members across England to accept a new NHS pay offer from Tory ministers, after a series of massive national strikes forced Downing Street to put an additional £2.5 billion on the table today.

If accepted, the proposal, which includes one-off payments of between £1,655 and just over £2,400 for the current financial year and 5 per cent for 2023-24, would apply to more than one million nurses, paramedics and other staff, but not doctors, who are on a different contract.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unison and GMB, which along with 11 other unions entered new pay talks with ministers last month, backed the deal and announced that planned walkouts would continue to be paused while members are consulted.

Unite said that it could not recommend the offer to members, but it would put it to a vote.

RCN head Pat Cullen said: “The government was forced into these negotiations as a result of historic pressure from staff.

“As well as the additional money, we have made real progress on safe staffing measures, a new pay structure, support for newly qualified staff and pensions too — it is not a panacea, but it is real, tangible progress.”

Unison head of health Sara Gorton welcomed the development but said it was a “shame it took so long to get here” following three months of walkouts, while GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison urged workers to be “proud of themselves.”

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the offer, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed was “good for staff, taxpayers and patients,” is “not one that Unite can recommend, but ultimately it is important that our members make the final decision.”

The union joined GMB in calling off a planned ambulance strike in Wales last week after progress in talks with devolved Labour ministers, while walkouts have so far been avoided in Scotland, where nurses have been offered 6.5 per cent plus a one-off payment for 2023-24.