ScotRail ticket offices under threat to help fund staff pay increase – The Scotsman
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Some ScotRail ticket offices could be closed or downgraded to help fund a pay rise for its 5,300 staff, The Scotsman has learned.
Other options believed to be being considered are cutting catering on trains, which has only been partially reinstated after being suspended due to the Covid pandemic.
They come as ScotRail’s four unions today rejected a 2.2 per cent increase tied to efficiency savings.
The Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT) announced a strike ballot over pay on Wednesday.
Engineers in the Unite union started industrial action last Friday.
There was speculation that ticket offices under threat of closure could include Burntisland, Kinghorn and Cowdenbeath in Fife and Easterhouse in Glasgow.
Others could see their opening hours reduced, but staff would be redeployed as ScotRail has a no compulsory redundancies policy.
An industry source said ScotRail’s ticket offices had not been reviewed for at least 15 years and some were very little used.
They said the number of closures might be “very small”, perhaps as few as three.
In a report published in August, Professor Iain Docherty of the University of Stirling, the country’s leading transport academic, questioned “whether legacy business activities such as the provision of ticket offices is viable in future”.
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