UNION officials have said their industrial action is over passenger safety - not jobs, or pay - as rail passengers face the misery of another day of strike action by the RMT.

In a full-page advert in yesterday’s Argus, Southern Trains’ chief executive called today's strike action “completely unnecessary” and the train company insisted their new operational model was “as safe as any other".

But regional organiser for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport workers, Paul Cox, told The Argus the removal of door safety responsibilities from the role of conductors would make train travel less safe.

He explained the key technological change which enables trains to be considered safe for driver-only operation (DOO) is new view screen monitors in drivers’ cabs which allow them to see footage from the side of the train.

But Mr Cox said the small split-screen images from multiple cameras were not as safe as the old system.

He said: “It’s not as safe as having a guard looking along the length of the train - looking and blowing his whistle. It’s not as safe as that.”

He added: “A driver would want to concentrate on the red signal and it makes the driver’s job much harder, to concentrate on this bank of screens as well as the red signal.”

Mr Cox said the union was working hard to meet bosses half way but would not compromise on the issue of passenger safety.

He said: “We have said that we’ll change all the working practices if they retain the safety-critical role of the guards.”

He claimed that after initial safety training there would be no ongoing cost saving to the evolution of the role of ‘conductor’ to ‘on-board supervisor' and questioned whether this was the first step towards removing the role altogether, saying: “The trains will run without them and they’ll eventually run down the numbers.”

A spokesman for Southern refuted the union’s claims, saying: “DOO is as safe as any other form of operation. It’s already in operation on 40 per cent of our services and it’s perfectly safe.

“In answer to Mr Cox's assertion that we are removing conductors from trains, this is simply untrue. We are simply evolving the role of the conductor. We are committed to providing 440 On Board Supervisors on our trains.”