SCOTRAIL conductors will be balloted on industrial action in a dispute over safety.

RMT has notified ScotRail management that it will ballot conductors - also known as train guards - over potential strike action, signalling potential disruption to summer services. The ballot will begin on May 24 and close on June 7.

Trade union bosses said they had been forced to pursue industrial action after failing to secure guarantees that driver-only and driver-controlled operations - where trains run without a conductor on board and drivers are responsible for opening and closing the doors - would not be extended during the lifetime of the Abellio ScotRail franchise.

RMT believes that conductors are vital for passenger safety.

General Secretary, Mick Cash said: "Any extension of DOO or DCO is a clear attack on our members hard earned terms and conditions. RMT members should not have to face the risk of their role and responsibilities being reduced and undermined.

"There is also a very real threat to passengers of watering down and wiping out the safety critical role of the guard on these ScotRail services. ?That is a lethal gamble with basic rail safety."

Phil Verster, managing director of ScotRail said the ballot was "inexplicable", stressing that there were no proposals on the table to extend driver-only or driver-controlled operations.

He added that more than half of ScotRail customers currently travel on a train where the driver is responsible for opening and closing the doors, while a second member of staff collects tickets and handles safety tasks. The arrangement - known as Driver Dispatch - dates back to 1986.

Mr Verster said: “Driver dispatched trains have been a safe and integral part of our railway here in Scotland for 30 years.

"In that time millions of people have taken journeys on trains that have had the doors safely opened and closed by the driver. It just makes no sense to say that something that has been working for 30 years is now suddenly unsafe.

"A strike about proposals that don’t exist makes no sense at all. The people who are most impacted by it are the customers who are affected by disruption to their service and our people who lose money as a result. It is a lose/lose situation.”

The ballot comes as RMT attacked the company behind Virgin Trains East Coast - a Stagecoach-Virgin consortium with Perth-based Stagecoach as the 90 per cent stakeholder - of trying to undermine any future industrial action.

It comes amid rumours that revenue from the former taxpayer-owned franchise has been lower than expected and that massive job cuts are looming.

In a memo issued yesterday, RMT accused VTEC of "deliberate and outrageous provocation" as it claimed the company "are secretly training up a scab army" of staff able to take over the roles of train managers and on-board crew if they vote to strike in future.

A spokesman for VTEC said it was routine "contingency planning".