RMT slams LNER contractor as it scraps payment of Real Living Wage RAIL UNION RMT condemns outsourcing company gatesolutions as workers take strike action. Outsourced catering staff who work along publicly owned LNER’s route will be taking strike action starting tomorrow (October 16) in a dispute with gatesolutions, an arm of a Swiss multinational, over pay.   The workers, who supply food to LNER’s services between London and Edinburgh are walking out after their employer announced that it would no longer pay the Real Living Wage, leaving some of these workers, many of whom work unsocial hours, on rates barely above the minimum wage legally permitted. The workers will walk out at 5am on Friday 16th October unless an offer is made to resolve the dispute.   Their employer, gatesolutions, is an arm of the Swiss-based multinational Gate Group, owned by a Singaporean Sovereign Wealth Fund and a private equity fund based in Hong Kong. The Group has a turnover of £4.7 billion and made an operating profit of £136 million in 2025. Their UK arm’s highest paid Director was paid £265,000 last year.   Outsourcing companies make their profits by holding wages down as low as possible and imposing inferior sick pay and pension arrangements on their staff.   LNER is part of the publicly owned railway and publicly prides itself on ‘leading the way’ in providing social value across its supply chain.   RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey said:   “The behaviour of gatesolutions management is contemptible but it’s par for the course for the outsourcing industry and the real scandal is that LNER is allowing this behaviour from its contractor. “Every day that outsourcing continues to exist it undermines the government’s ambitions that GBR be ‘one railway, one team and an employer of choice’.  We need to see action now. “LNER need to get their contractor in order and make them table an offer to sort out the dispute and then they need to start talking to us about insourcing this contract.”