Union dispute affects CrossCountry services

CrossCountry has warned passengers of “short notice cancellations” to its services across the network as an unresolved dispute with the RMT union begins to affect its timetable.

The union began an overtime ban on June 9 after its CrossCountry members overwhelmingly voted for action on May 23. As part of the action, workers are also refusing to work on rest days with the action expected to last until October 25. It does however exclude Sundays.

Eddie Dempsey, the union’s general secretary said that the operator was trying to “wriggle out of its agreements and block fair pay for its members.”

RMT and the operator settled a dispute in August last year which centered on senior managers working shifts as Train Managers and Senior Conductors at a higher pay rate than their colleagues. As part of the deal struck at the time, RMT and CrossCountry agreed to open talks on improving better pay for working rest days and Sundays across all grades.

That deal ended on March 31 with the union accusing the operator of not responding to requests for discussions to take place.

Dempsey added: “Our members have been left with no choice but to take industrial action. Our members deserve proper recognition for the work they do, and we will campaign until they get it.

“We urge the employer and DfT to negotiate properly and help us reach a negotiated settlement.”

CrossCountry has argued that the use of management contingency is commonplace within the industry and insists it is open to a “dialogue with all its recognised trade unions, including the RMT.”

However, the timing of the industrial action is not ideal for the beleaguered operator. It was forced to reduce services last year and operate a partial timetable for three months after a serious backlog in driver training was compounded by industrial action. It led to the then Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh to write to the company. In the letter, Haigh said that passengers had been "suffering from a substandard service for too long".

Haigh added: “Over the past year, the level of train cancellations across your company has increased significantly and by your own forecasts, you expected to breach your contractual targets for cancellations in the coming months.”

The operator introduced a new full timetable at the beginning of May, which it said would offer an extra 28,000 seats, and include extra carriages on some of its longer distance routes including from Reading to Newcastle and Bristol to Manchester Piccadilly.

The operator acknowledged to RAIL that the new timetable had suffered with a “settling in” period which saw an increase in delays and a handful of cancellations. In the most recent statistics, between January and March 2025, CrossCountry recorded the highest percentage of cancelled trains (5.3%) amongst operators.

In a statement, Richard Morris, CrossCountry’s Service Delivery Director, said: "We’re sorry to customers who will be disrupted by industrial action. While we’re working hard to run as many services as possible over this period, we know there will be more cancellations than usual across all routes from Monday 9 June.”