Outsourced TransPennine Workers Strike as Public Rail Keeps Private Contractors
Cleaners and catering workers on TransPennine Express walked out on Friday, November 13, in a dispute that exposes a sharp contradiction inside Britain’s publicly owned railway: the trains may be back in public hands, but essential workers are still employed by private contractors on inferior terms.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport union said its members employed by Bidvest Noonan and Rail Gourmet were striking over low pay, weak sick-pay provision and inadequate pensions. TransPennine Express confirmed that industrial action involving its cleaning and catering partners was affecting the network on Friday. The operator warned passengers that catering could be limited or unavailable and that cleaning services would be reduced, while saying it had contingency arrangements in place.
The dispute is not over marginal work. Cleaners make trains safe and usable; caterers keep long-distance services functioning for passengers and crews. Yet outsourcing separates these workers from the employment standards attached to the public operator whose service they sustain. The result is a two-tier railway: one public brand, one timetable, but different employers and different rights inside the same operation.
RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said private outsourcing companies hold down wages and cut employment costs to extract profits. The union’s demand is direct: the contractors should make serious proposals on pay, sick pay and pensions. TransPennine Express apologised for the disruption and said it was working with its partners on contingency arrangements.
The pressure is no longer confined to the bargaining table. A motion in the House of Commons has backed the workers and called for outsourced roles to be brought in-house. By October 27, the motion had attracted 20 MPs’ signatures. It also cited £37 million in dividends paid by Bidvest Noonan in 2024 and a £29.6 million dividend paid by Rail Gourmet’s parent company, SSP Group, in the same year. Those figures are claims recorded in the parliamentary motion; they underline the political question at the heart of the strike: why should profit be extracted from publicly funded rail while the people doing essential work fight for basic employment protections?
Public ownership, private contracts
Outsourcing is often defended as a technical procurement choice. In practice, it shifts accountability. The train operator can say that pay is a matter for the contractor, while the contractor works inside a public-service system whose revenue and schedules it does not control. Workers are left negotiating across a fragmented chain even though passengers experience one railway.
That fragmentation is especially difficult to justify as Britain rebuilds a publicly directed rail system. If public ownership stops at the contract boundary, it can preserve many of privatisation’s labour relations under a new institutional label. Insourcing cleaning and catering would not solve every problem on the railway, but it would establish a simple principle: workers delivering the same public service should not be pushed onto weaker conditions because their payslip carries a contractor’s name.
Friday’s strike therefore reaches beyond a single day of reduced catering and cleaning. Like the North Sea platform walkout and continuing labour disputes across Europe, it is a test of who benefits when essential infrastructure is reorganised. Public ownership has meaning only if it improves accountability and the conditions of the people who keep the service running.
What happens next
The union and the operator agree on one immediate fact: the action is real and its effects are visible. The unresolved issue is whether Bidvest Noonan and Rail Gourmet will produce offers that meet the workers’ demands—or whether the public railway will continue to carry a private-contract model built on unequal terms.
Sources: RMT; TransPennine Express; UK Parliament.
Cover image: Class 185 at Manchester Airport, June 24, 2024. Colinmikyinwong / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Contextual file photograph. Body image source: David Robinson / Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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