NETWORK Rail has started a High Court bid to block next week’s national rail strike on the ground that the union had counted votes from staff at 39 signal boxes which had either closed or burnt down.

The infrastructure company is seeking an injunction against the planned 24-hour walkout by 7,500 Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) members from 6.30pm next Tuesday. A further 7,500 RMT staff at London Underground are due to strike at the same time.

Network Rail claims that information that the union was obliged to provide under labour relations legislation was “inaccurate and deficient”.

It alleges that the RMT listed 107 members working at signal boxes which were no longer open. The signal boxes included Hessle, East Yorkshire, which closed 25 years ago, Brighton, which closed 21 years ago, and Garston on Merseyside, which was burnt down by vandals last July.

The overall vote by RMT members at Network Rail showed 58 per cent were in favour of industrial action in the dispute over pay and pensions. But a breakdown of the figures revealed that signal workers only backed action by 50.8 per cent, a majority of 56.

Only the signal workers have the power to bring the network to a halt. A strike by the other workers, who are all from Network Rail’s maintenance division, would have little immediate impact on services.

Signal workers earn an average of £32,500 while maintenance workers earn £23,000.

The legal challenge is expected to be heard by a judge in London today or tomorrow. A spokesman for Network Rail said: “We have taken this action to prevent passengers and freight customers from suffering the consequences of this unnecessary and potentially damaging strike. We needed the correct locations for the staff who were balloted so we would have the opportunity of talking to them to ensure they got both sides of the story.

“Clearly we couldn’t target them because we couldn’t send information to signal boxes that didn’t exist.”

Network Rail also claimed that the RMT had listed station cleaning staff among those who were balloted. The staff at the stations concerned do not work for Network Rail.

A total of 862 employees were listed by the RMT as working at “unknown” locations. Among these, nine had “unknown” job titles. “That makes them ‘unknown unknowns’,” the spokesman said.

A senior RMT source accused the company of “clutching at straws”. He said: “Our database may not have been updated. People only contact their union when something is wrong and it is very difficult to keep track of people who may have been promoted or moved to other locations.”

The RMT plans to hold another ballot if Network Rail succeeds in obtaining an injunction. The union believes members’ views will have hardened by then because of anger over the company’s efforts to block the strike and the six-figure bonuses it recently awarded its directors.

An RMT spokesman said: “If Network Rail succeeds in winning an injunction, we will reballot for a bigger vote for action, including the 5,000 infrastructure workers who are coming back in-house.

“Network Rail will not intimidate the RMT into abandoning its fight for pensions justice.”

A spokesman for the Strategic Rail Authority, reacting to the threat to ballot more workers, said: “This tells passengers everything they need to know about (RMT leader) Bob Crow. There are more ghosts in Bob Crow’s ballots than at Hogwarts.”

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