Mick Whelan, the head of the Aslef train drivers’ union, has never even opened an email setting out a proposed deal to end strike action 17 months ago because he realised the offer was so bad it would be rejected, he has said. In an interview with parliamentary magazine The House, Whelan said he had not met Mark Harper, the transport secretary, since December 2022, or Huw Merriman, the transport minister whose brief covers rail, since January 2023. This was not usual, said Whelan, who has been Aslef’s general secretary since 2011, especially given his union has been staging intermittent strikes over pay and working conditions in England since July 2022.
“In normal political cycles, you meet your minister a couple of times of year, so they can say he’s met with the trade unions, and you can get a few gripes off your chest. Occasionally, you might achieve something,” he said. Explaining the December 2022 offer from the Rail Delivery Group, which brings together train operating companies, Whelan said it was sent to him 10 minutes before it was briefed to the media, which he said showed bad faith. “On the day before New Year’s Eve, Keith [Aslef’s press officer] rang me at 3.40 in the afternoon and said: ‘The Mail, the Telegraph, the Sunday Express would like to know what you think of the deal’. Excuse me for a moment, what fucking deal?” Whelan recounted. Details of the offer given to the media, showing it involved two years of 4% pay rises in exchange for the acceptance of changed working practices, had been widely seen by members before the union’s board met. He said: “We’ve got a building full of resolutions from the branches, ‘Don’t you dare ever sign anything like that, we’ll cut your throat,’ basically.” The email was still in his inbox, unread, Whelan said. “I still haven’t opened it. Not to this day.” This was in part to protest against the way the offer was handled, Whelan said, but also because he had once been involved in a court case in which the litigant said he had read an email, when it was one of his staff who did, meaning he is naturally cautious about opening some messages. Whelan said his one meeting with Harper had been cordial, but that the transport secretary briefed the media otherwise: “I don’t believe I was rude or unprofessional. Next day it appeared in the Mail that he didn’t like my tone. “My experience of Mark Harper is he fundamentally, obviously, doesn’t like me or he wouldn’t brief to the Mail. I haven’t seen him since.” The other rail unions, the RMT and TSSA, have agreed deals with train operators, while Aslef has reached agreements in Scotland and Wales. A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “The transport secretary and rail minister have already facilitated a pay offer that would take train drivers’ average salaries up to £65,000 – almost twice the UK average salary. “Aslef are the only union left in dispute after the government oversaw deals with all the other unions.”