Final day of The Open threatened

A rail strike is planned for the final day of The Open, so if you are going to be traveling to Royal Birkdale by train, you’d better have a Plan B.

Merseyrail is calling on the RMT union to call off strike action designed to coincide with for the final day of the Open for maximum disruption.

Merseyrail managing director, Jan Chaudhry-van der Velde (no relation surely? Ed), has now criticised the planned strike as ‘disgraceful’ and accused union bosses of not caring about the region.

“It is disgraceful that the RMT Executive should deliberately target major events that the city region has worked so hard to bring to Merseyside. As we saw with Aintree Saturday in April, the RMT Executive thinks nothing of doing down the Liverpool city region in its proudest moments. Only one out of the 20 members of the RMT National Executive Committee covers the Liverpool city region.

"They don’t care about the economic and reputational damage that they cause.

"This industrial action is nothing to do with safety. If it was, the RMT would never have agreed a staffing deal last month with Great Western Railway, which sees new trains introduced, some with guards on them and some operating only with drivers.’

“There are no compulsory redundancies in this dispute. All permanent Merseyrail guards who would like to stay in the business can do, with their salaries protected.”

With 200,000 fans expected to visit The Open over the course of the week, this disruption on the Sunday could put a major spanner in a lot of people’s plans. We hope it can be resolved, but if not have that Plan B dusted down.

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