Political football

London drivers are set to take strike action tomorrow (Thursday, February 5) in a dispute over deeply unfair pay inequalities among the capital’s 18 different operators.

 
It’s a long-standing but ultimately straightforward dispute – drivers are only asking for one, uniform rate of pay for doing the same work as their colleagues contracted by different operators, work that’s often so similar it involves operating the same model of bus on the same exact route.

 
Ahead of the strike, however, Transport for London (TfL) – a supposedly neutral party, considering its status as a local government body – is actively seeking to undermine efforts to resolve the dispute, a move Unite has tonight condemned.

 
TfL’s misleading comments as the strike approaches does a disservice to all involved in the dispute, argued Unite regional officer Wayne King.

 
“TfL should be playing a constructive role in facilitating a resolution to the dispute with London’s 18 bus operators, who despite our tireless efforts over two years are refusing to talk collectively about ending pay inequality,” King said.

 
“Instead, TfL is seeking to inflame the situation and undermine hopes of resolving the dispute with misinformed and misleading comments,” he added. “All we are asking for is a collective forum to discuss how we can end pay disparities over a sensible timeframe.”

 
“Plain scaremongering”

 
Laurie Carrigan, a Unite member and bus driver for Go-Ahead London, who explained to UniteLive earlier today why he and his colleagues would be striking tomorrow, was flabbergasted by the contents of an “open letter” TfL boss Leon Daniels published on its site today.

 
Daniels noted in his letter that pay agreements negotiated by individual bus operators “regularly resulted in pay rises above the rate of inflation,” a notion which Carrigan scoffed at.

 
“I have been a London bus driver for five years and my take home pay is pretty much the same as when I started,” Carrigan argued. “If you are unlucky enough to have to move garages then your pay is very much down!

 
“What about the drivers who have been the victim of the tendering process?” Carrigan went on to say. “When they are forced to move with their route to a garage miles away, and if they want to transfer back closer to home, they have to take a pay cut onto a company’s 5/10 year starter rate!

 
“No mention of these dirty tricks from Mr Daniels. Maybe he’s not aware of them?”

 
Carrigan, a seasoned driver who works in Waterloo and is intimately acquainted with bus operators’ unfair terms and conditions, denounced Daniel’s claim that “Unite demands could mean drivers have to work on days and at times they currently don’t have to.”

 
This statement Carrigan highlighted as patently false and insisted it was “plain scaremongering.”

 
When the TfL boss noted in his letter that the “most worrying thing about [drivers’ demands] is the additional costs”, Carrigan replied:

 
“Here we have the real reason in the end. If costs are a concern, how about we start by looking at the huge profits the private company shareholders benefit from every year – from TfL contracts funded by the fare-paying public and taxpayers?”

 
Carrigan went on to point out that the public, too, should be aware of TfL bosses’ outrageous expenses, revealed recently in the London Evening Standard, which found commissioner Sir Peter Hendy purchasing fine bottles of wine priced at £45 a pop, all on the public’s dime.

 
Failing passengers

 
King argued that TfL’s interference ultimately does a grave disservice to passengers and the men and women who keep London’s buses on the road.

 
“To suggest [what we are asking for] is unlawful is misinformed and to suggest fares may rise when the capital’s bus operators are making combined profits of £171.7 million per year is misleading,” King said.

 
“The current situation is unsustainable,” he added. “Just as you wouldn’t employ police officers on different rates of pay across London, neither should you with bus drivers,” he went on to say, noting that the two-thirds of the public in previous surveys agree.

 
Carrigan, whose livelihood is at stake, along with the livelihoods of almost 30,000 other drivers, put it best when he summed up the current situation:

 
“It does seem strange to me that all the different companies and TfL can agree to have all the buses painted red, all the destination blinds glowing white, all the fares fixed the same, but no talks are allowed about the fair treatment of the human being behind the wheel responsible for the safety and comfort of six million TFL passengers a day.”

 
Stay tuned on UNITElive as we report from the picket line tomorrow.