Argh, that last post got posted prematurely, as I hadn't finished yet!
(Perhaps my presence here on utl is just not meant to be!). I will
continue...

On 11 Sep, 23:53, Mizter T wrote:
Bus drivers and supervisors who work for First Group and Metrobus are
going on strike tomorrow - at First Group they're striking for 48
hours, at Metrobus for 24 hours. The strike has been called by the
Unite union (the result of the 2007 merger between Amicus and the
T&GWU), who "want a standard £30,000 rate of pay for drivers across
the bus network" (so says the BBC webpage linked to below).

A list of the affected routes can be found on TfL's website here...http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravel...s/default.html

...and on the BBC London webpages here...http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/.../bus_strike_fe...

I don't know whether either company will attempt to run any of their
services using non-union staff - running a skeleton service on certain
routes might be a recipe for more of a disaster than not running a
service at all. Any resources could I suppose be concentrated on
running a ...

....proper service on one or two routes.

I'm intrigued to note that it's only staff at First Group and Metrobus
going on strike, and not at any of the other bus companies (given that
the desire is for a London-wide rate of pay regardless of company).
One wonders if Unite have a particularly strong presence in those two
companies?

If my memory serves me right then First Buses in London does appear to
have a somewhat more turbulent history of industrial relations than
other bus companies. Is the management there more intransigent? Is
there more of a history of union militancy at those garages? Obviously
to an extent those two factors can interplay with each other in a
chicken and egg scenario when trying to work out where it all began.

With regards to the actual issue, well I'm at all clued up on all the
ins and outs of it all, all I will say is that I do think driving a
bus in London is a fairly testing job. But I never find it easy
working out the relative merits of various jobs and what they should
pay.


P.S. Been absent from usenet for quite a while (not even lurking),
though I must admit for my sins that I crept back to uk.railway before
I came back here - my excuse is that there's so much going on in the
arena of transport in the metropolis lately (though isn't there
always) that I was wary of getting sucked into some kind of utl black
hole!


(Perhaps the black hole is sucking me away from utl!)