Sue Atkins, Southampton Socialist Party
Bus workers, members of Unite the Union, across Portsmouth and Hampshire have been taking strike action since talks stalled in December. The company, First Group, failed to make a fair pay offer.
First Group has offered workers just a 4% pay deal, and has also refused to reinstate many of the terms and conditions that were removed during the Covid pandemic.
Over 140 drivers and supervisors based at the Hoeford depot in Gosport Road, Fareham, have joined the picket line to demonstrate their anger at the offer and the intransigence of management.
Services across Portsmouth, Gosport, Fareham, and into Southampton, have been affected so that only a skeleton service has run on strike days. The mood on the picket line is confident and determined to bring the company back to negotiations.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “First Group is making millions of pounds of profit across the UK on public transport, yet is treating its workers and the communities they come from in Hampshire with disdain.
“To pay barely above the minimum wage for a skilled and high-pressure job is utterly unacceptable, and our members at First will have the full support of Unite in their dispute”.
First Group had revenues of nearly £5 billion in 2023 across the UK, while First Hampshire and Dorset had a turnover of nearly £37 million. The current CEO has a salary of £971,000 – about 36 times the wage of a bus driver!
Strikes have taken place every weekend in January and are planned for 2-9, 12-14, 16-23 and 25-27 February. The drivers welcome visits to their picket lines. We have discussed alternative ways of running the bus service and bringing it back under local authority control.
