journalist dom phillips. and coming up at 6.30 all the day s sport, including leicester tigers dramatic win over saracens in english rugby s premiership decider. good afternoon and welcome to bbc news. the rmt union has confirmed that next week s rail strikes will go ahead. they say talks have failed to resolve a dispute about pay, jobs and working conditions. the strikes will affect railway lines across the country. our business correspondent vishala sri pathma reports. it s set to be a chaotic time if you re travelling by rail at all next week. three 24 hour strikes planned across the week on tuesday, thursday, and saturday, with strikes on the london underground to go ahead on tuesday, as well. for those who have plans to go on holiday by rail, or, indeed, go to work, the strikes are notjust disruptive they re costly. i think it s just down to greed, isn t it? i mean, government put in, is it, £16 billion of our money, to keep the railways running during the pande
sign from outside at least that the two sides are coming closer together and what that is likely to mean is next week disruption is inevitable, evenif next week disruption is inevitable, even if the strikes are called off. beyond that, we have to hope the two sides get together, but at the moment it doesn t look likely. so millions of people are likely to face their christmas plans being disrupted and businesses who need the customer s who are normally around at christmas, but won t be, because they re stuck at home. thank ou. joining me now is a former director of network rail, anna jane hunter, who is now a rail operations consultant at the railway industry consultancy winder philips. pay, one of the issues. can i look at some safety issues that rmt have been arguing about for many years now. that is d00, the driver,
but it s the passengers that will feel the brunt. lots of people will work from home, which we ve all most of us who can have become accustomed to that over the past few years, so it could be that it doesn t bite those people quite so much as it would have done in previous years. but for more of the leisure and travel events you know, glastonbury s often mentioned as being one of the big events that s happening next week the reality is that people willjust have to find another way to travel. the reality is that people willjust the department for transport told the bbc that they are hugely disappointed and felt the strikes were premature and are urging the rmt to reconsider. but with no compromise in sight for the time being, it s set to be a stressful seven days ahead for passengers. vishala sri pathma, bbc news. earlier we ve heard from rail operations consultant anna jane hunter, whom you saw in our report, she commented on what caused disruption to rail transport. i think