TSSA union staff overwhelmingly vote to strike

The TSSA, a union for rail staff, represented at work by the GMB, have voted overwhelmingly to strike over a longstanding row about the union’s toxic workplace culture under general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust.

The ballot closed on Wednesday with 86% of staff voting in favour of strike action, on a high turnout of 73%. This new strike action will be the second time that TSSA staff have taken industrial action over bullying and intimidation and a lack of fair process. The previous strike action last summer saw the union close for fifteen days with picket lines outside TSSA’s central London office – which Eslamdoust was accused of crossing.

GMB regional organiser Andrew Harden said:

Bullying, intimidation, and harassment have no place inside any workplace, let alone a union. The results of this strike ballot send a clear message: TSSA’s staff want the union’s leadership to clean up their act.

TSSA’s leadership cannot ignore this vote. Staff have spoken. There is something seriously wrong with the way they are being treated and the way the organisation is being run.

A GMB member working for TSSA said:

The GS [General Secretary] can’t take criticism and just twists everything back and plays the victim at every turn. If they were competent to do the job, they wouldn’t do that.

Eslamdoust was recently accused of delaying – for the second time – the result of elections for the union’s presidency after voting appeared to go heavily against the candidates close to her.

Union insiders – including former TSSA general secretary Steve Coe, on the record – accused the management regime of general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust of playing ‘every trick in the book’ to nullify the previous elections for president and treasurer because her favoured candidates had lost heavily to left-wing challengers Duncan Bates and Paul Mangan. The union had announced, as soon as the ballot closed, that a “serious” complaint had been made against one of the challengers – no details ever provided, even to the accused, to the serious alarm of members.

Coe subsequently repeated his accusation that Eslamdoust’s allies had lost – and accused her of ‘trashing’ the union’s reputation.

A chaotic record

Having been brought in – and recommended to members by the TSSA executive despite having no relevant experience, after threats that they had “better select Eslamdoust or [they’d] have to answer to Andi Fox” a senior TSSA figure and close confidante of previous general secretary Manuel Cortes – Eslamdoust and her team have previously:

been repeatedly accused by union staff, who have been in dispute with their employer for more than a year, of bullying and using anti-union tactics against them – and of crossing their picket line during strike action
been accused of paying off disgraced former managers of the union she claimed she was going to sort out after years of sexual harassment and mismanagement under her predecessor Manuel Cortes
suspended senior union figures not in Eslamdoust’s camp just after they won key elections or awards from the union
lost a unanimous vote of no confidence among TSSA staff and another unanimous vote by one of TSSA’s biggest member branches
tried to bypass TSSA staff in their dispute by going straight to the GMB union that represents them at work
attacked the GMB in the national press – and attacked striking staff in an email to members
‘summarily derecognised’ the TSSA’s women’s group, which accused Eslamdoust and her allies of perpetuating the abuse and harassment that characterised the regime of her predecessor Manuel Cortes
barred delegates and members from last year’s TSSA annual conference and blocked a no-confidence motion brought against her
attacked delegates at the 2025 conference as ‘parochial’ for wanting to raise these issues

Escalation

Members and staff say that far from putting right the sexual harassment, bullying, misogyny and abuse under Cortes, which were exposed in a searing report by Baroness Helena Kennedy, Eslamdoust and her allies have continued and even escalated the war on the union’s staff.

Dates for the new strike action will be confirmed shortly. Skwawkbox has previously approached the union for comment about these issues and allegations, with no response.

Featured image via the Canary