Gerry Doherty, general secretary of TSSA is to retire at then end of the year. Doherty, 58, has been leader of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association for seven years.
‘I think this is the right time to go given all the challenges the union is facing in the coming years,’ says Mr Doherty.
‘We are now in merger talks with our sister union, the RMT, which I hope will come to a successful conclusion next year.
‘But we are also faced with the biggest attack on our members in a generation with Sir Roy McNulty’s report on rail costs. It wrongly diagnoses labour costs as the biggest problem facing the industry when John Major’s disastrous privatisation is the real problem.
‘We need a new generation of leaders to tackle these issues in both the short and longer term.’ His successor will be decided in a secret ballot of members in November.
Bob Crow, RMT general secretary, said, ‘As TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty has developed a positive working relationship to take our two unions forward.’
The new union could have a membership of over 100,000 – TSSA currently has over 28,000 members. Discussions on the merger continue.
