Transport across the whole of mainland Britain may be disrupted soon as the threat of the first national rail strike for 14 years looms.

The rail industry's biggest union has announced it was balloting 17,000 workers for industrial action.

Rail staff working on signals and infrastructure maintenance across the country could strike after the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT) rejected a pay offer from Network Rail (NR) that they said would cut living standards.

The RMT said staff would be balloted and would vote on whether to strike over the next week.

The results will be known on May 22 and strikes could start a week later, ironically at the beginning of the summer holiday season.

Behind the scenes there are two separate disputes: 12,000 infrastructure workers rejected an "unacceptable" offer from NR on harmonising terms and conditions, while 5,000 signal workers and other operational staff turned down an improved offer the union said was worth just 0.1% in the first year of a two-year pay deal.

The harmonisation dispute follows months of talks aimed at achieving a single set of terms and conditions for maintenance staff, many of whom have transferred to NR from private firms.

Bob Crowe, the RMT union's General Secretary Bob Crow said: "The company has been using the talks to drive down our members' conditions and they can hardly be surprised that their pathetic offer was thrown out by a margin of more than 100 to one.

"The company is now saying that our members can stay on their existing terms but they are already moving to sneak inferior conditions in through the back door."

Crow also said the company had been warned that the second stage of a two-year pay offer of inflation plus 0.5% would not protect rail workers against rising costs.

But NR said maintenance workers had no reason to strike and talks about terms and conditions were continuing.

Peter Bennett, NR's Director of Human Resources, said the company had made a "fair and reasonable" pay offer to signalling workers worth 4.8% this year and the rate of inflation plus 0.5% next year.

"People in any walk of life would recognise this as a good deal and one that other unions have already accepted as fair. But the RMT wants even more. Their demands are unreasonable."

NR also said it was in the middle of talks with unions about standardising more than 50 sets of terms and conditions for maintenance workers which the company inherited several years ago when maintenance work was brought back in-house.

"This work continues and no agreement has been reached, nothing proposed, and nothing is on the table about which to strike," said Bennett.

The last national strike by signal workers was in 1994 when rail services were disrupted for three months.

(BMcC)