PASSENGER TRANSPORT Un-fare!
“Whatever it takes, we’re going to get this money,” says bus driver Joan Campbell. Joan, together with Unite London bus worker members, is determined to secure a £500 bonus from their employers in recognition of the flood of extra work anticipated for this summer’s Olympic Games.
Part of Unite’s Olympic 500 campaign, the angry members are outside Transport for London’s HQ (TfL), getting out of an open-topped old Routemaster to protest over their exclusion from a deal similar to those already agreed for staff at London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railways (DLR), Network Rail and Virgin Rail.
While these transport personnel are all poised to receive at least £500, London mayor Boris Johnson and the bus companies refuse to talk to Unite about the bus workers’ claim for parity.
The union’s 21,000 London bus members have voted by a landslide nine to one on strike action. And an independent representative public opinion poll, conducted by MASS 1, shows that 88 per cent of respondents think London bus staff should receive an Olympic payment ‘in line with every other London transport worker’.
“Bus workers have been left out,” says Stagecoach shop steward Dave Garner. “Bus drivers are the Capital’s transport workers who will most closely interact with the extra Olympic Games passengers, and be most affected by the increase in passenger traffic volumes.
“The bus driver is in the frontline – answering tourists’ and bus passengers’
BY MIKE GERBER
London’s bus workers will be in the forefront of passenger relations as the Olympics come to town. So why are they the only London transport workers not to receive an Olympic payment?
questions. They’re the ones that are going to be taking the abuse and putting up with the stress from the excess traffic. We actually feel affronted that we’ve been forgotten.”
Mayor Johnson insists the issue has nothing to do with him or TfL, that it is a matter for the union and bus operators. “TfL, we believe, is involved in one way or the other, telling the operators what to do,” responds Unite regional officer Wayne King. “When we put our case for an extra payment last December, the response received from every operator was word for word the same.”
Unite regional secretary Peter
Kavanagh points out, “These games and the million extra passengers we’re expecting every day on the bus network are going to generate a huge amount of income that will go straight into the coffers of TfL rather than to the employers.
“What we’re saying is, in the same way that Boris Johnson released money for the other parts of the network, he should do exactly the same for the bus network.”
Send a message of support to bus members – contact
wayne.king@
unitetheunion.org
See page 6
15 uniteWORKS July/August 2012
Mark Thomas
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36