Last-minute festive travellers will face chaos after rail union members announced a new strike from 6pm on Christmas Eve.
The RMT union will tell its members not to work from 6pm on December 24 until 6am on December 27.
Christmas Day and Boxing Day have barely any trains anyway due to engineering work.
But the action is set to disrupt people who planned to travel late in the day on December 24.
It comes on top of the RMT’s planned strikes on December 13, 14, 16 and 17, and on January 3, 4, 6 and 7.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said “we’ve got no choice” after his union rejected train companies' “very poor” offer of a 4% pay rise two years in a row.
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Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock)As inflation tops 11%, he said it was train firms that were holding the travelling public "to ransom", adding: “We’ve been compelled to take this action because of the intransigence of the government".
He went on: “They want to close every booking office in Britain."
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) offered a backdated 4% pay rise for 2022 with the same again next year and guarantee of no compulsory redundancies before April 2024.
But within hours of the offer on Sunday it was rejected by the RMT.
A new offer from Network Rail - which is separate to the train operating firms - will be put to RMT members in an electronic referendum that closes at noon on Monday. But the union is advising members to reject it.
Mr Lynch said: “At the minute, we haven't got anything that's acceptable to us. And we feel that we've been compelled to take this action because of the intransigence of the government.
“We've got no choice because what we've been faced with is an extremely detrimental offer. It's very poor in relation to the pay elements.
“And our members simply aren't in the position - [from] the feedback that we've had - to accept the changes that the companies have put on the table. So the action will go ahead."
Mr Lynch added that it was “an unfortunate position”. He continued: “We remain open to discussion with the companies, they know what needs to be done to get this dispute progressed… but at the moment, we've not gotten the means to a solution.”
This breaking news story is being updated.
