Emergency plans to stop food crisis as biggest rail strike in modern British history looms

Rail bosses are drawing up emergency plans to stop what is expected to be the biggest rail strike in modern history leaving supermarket shelves empty and petrol pumps dry.

Union barons are plotting to unleash chaos in an effort to block plans for thousands of maintenance jobs to be cut and secure double-digit percentage pay rises for their staff.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union is midway through a ballot for strike action of workers at train operators and Network Rail, with voting due to close on Tuesday.

Manuel Cortes, head of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), has promised the biggest disruption since the General Strike in 1926 as his union also consults members.

The looming crisis has forced rail executives to draft a series of measures aimed at minimising the disruption and economic damage a strike could wreak. Industrial action may begin as early as June 7.

Plans include freight trains being given priority over passenger services to head off potential food and fuel shortages, including by introducing times when tracks are reserved for goods, The Times reported.

Other measures could include managers being trained to dispatch trains and Network Rail working with operators on a skeleton, 12-hour timetable to keep key services running, according to reports.

It remains unclear whether any strike would be carried out as one big action, or a series of rolling strikes.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, is expected to meet the Prime Minister next week to discuss the problem.

Ministers fear a national strike at Network Rail, particularly one involving signallers, would cause the most disruption and services would have to be “drastically” smaller than normal, the Financial Times reported.

The freight industry is more vulnerable to disruption than passenger trains because it runs a 24-hour service.

It comes after rail industry figures told the Telegraph that Drax power station, Tesco and the fuel supplier Puma Energy are among those warning ministers that a shutdown on the railways will have a catastrophic impact on supply chains.

Switching to transporting freight by road is not an option because of the shortage of lorry drivers.

Rail unions are also refusing to accept steep cost cuts to balance the books and stem the need for taxpayers to keep Britain’s railways afloat.

Thousands of jobs will be axed, hundreds of ticket offices closed, and rail pensions are to be reformed under a radical overhaul as demand for services stabilises at around 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

The Government has previously warned that the rail industry is "merely on life support" and cuts are imperative.

Prospective industrial action at Network Rail, which is planning to cut 2,500 engineering jobs, would be the first of its kind since 1994.

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT, said: "We believe in modernising the railways but we do not believe in sacrificing thousands of jobs, constant pay freezes or making the railways unsafe.

"That is what government plans will mean for the railways if RMT and other transport unions don’t mount a comprehensive defence of the industry.”