First is the largest surface transportation company in the United Kingdom. It employs 62,000 workers here and in North America and rakes in more than £1.6 billion in profits a year. The company operates one in five local bus services in the United Kingdom, as well as passenger trains, and freight bus and train services.

Two days after the strike began the company announced plans to use strikebreakers, including managers from subsidiaries. Workers on the picket line said TGWU members in other union branches visited the picket line on July 26, and other union branches across the United Kingdom had issued warnings that their members would respond to any moves by the company to introduce strikebreaking. Company officials then announced that while the use of scabs remains “under serious consideration,” taking such action “would be a step of last resort.”

Pickets said they still take the company’s threat of bringing in strikebreakers seriously, depending on the outcome of a pending contract vote. Workers will be voting on the company’s latest offer to increase pay across the board from 27 pence to 30 pence, but as part of a two-year deal that cuts sick pay. The union has called for a rejection of the company proposal, and is demanding a 30 pence pay increase across the board in a one-year deal.

On the picket line at the Olive Grove bus depot in Sheffield, which employs up to 800 workers, a 24-hour picket line has been established since the beginning of the strike. Several workers explained that the dispute is part of an ongoing fight to end the different pay levels at the company.

The unionists want to close the gap between drivers who start on the rate of £5.85 per hour to the next rate of £7.13 within three years. Currently there is a gap of three and a half years between new starters and the next pay rate. It then takes a further 15 years to get the senior pay rate of £7.53 per hour.

One of the strikers, who asked that his name not be used, explained that five pay rates existed prior to 2002, and bus workers had fought successfully to reduce this to three rates. A number of workers expressed the view that the gap between newly employed workers and those on the next pay rate should be no more than 6 months.

Workers are also fighting for a reduction in their rostered hours of work from 40 hours per week with a maximum of 41, to 39 hours per week with a maximum of 40. Bus drivers currently work up to 8.5 hours a day with one hour of unpaid. They can be forced to work up to five hours without a break. Strikers are trying to reduce the maximum length of duty to 8.3 hours with a break every four and half hours.

The union has received solidarity from the Teamsters union and the Service Employees International Union in the United States, who also have members employed by First. The company’s international operations include 17,400 school buses in the United States, carrying 1 million students daily.  
 
 
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