Labour has urged the Transport Minister to intervene and broker a deal between unions and ScotRail to head off planned industrial action.
Rail union RMT is planning two days of strike action in an ongoing dispute with ScotRail over driver-only trains.
The RMT said it had "no option" but to stage further 24-hour strikes on Sunday July 24 and 31 amid the failure of talks through the conciliation service Acas.
Read more: Union to ballot Virgin workers over possible industrial action
Labour's transport spokesman Neil Bibby urged Transport Minister Humza Yousaf to meet with the parties to end the stalemate.
He said: "Rail passengers have already faced significant disruption this summer due to infrastructure work on the Queen Street tunnel and Glasgow Subway causing delays and cancellations.
"The new UK Transport Secretary said resolving the dispute on Southern Railways was his 'top priority'. The SNP Government should start to take seriously the real concerns of ScotRail staff and get a grip of this situation.
"The First Minister was wrong to dismiss legitimate questions on behalf of ScotRail staff in June and after a dozen days of industrial action this issue clearly isn't going away.
"The SNP Government and Transport Minister should publicly intervene and meet with the parties in dispute in order to reach an end to this industrial stalemate, to the satisfaction of all parties and rail passengers in particular."
RMT opposes any extension of driver-only trains and wants guards to be in control of operating doors.
It says safety was at the core of the dispute, which has already resulted in several days of industrial action.
ScotRail says 59% of customers already travel on a train where the doors are safely opened and closed by the driver, and insists that the job, pay and conditions of conductors is guaranteed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel