By Abigail Pollock
A major bus strike by Arriva London North bus drivers, set for the first week of October, was only averted after an unprecedented 11% pay deal. The deal is the result of consolidated action by dedicated Unite reps and activists alike and union members who had stood their ground and voted for indefinite strike action.
Traditionally Unite reps begin to negotiate pay-deals for the new financial year by February. Since the years of austerity, wages have been frozen at around 2-4% per annum and so this year, the cost-of living crisis as well the TfL ‘funding gap’ had added extra urgency to the negotiations.
By September, Unite was still in negotiations, whilst dealing with one- to two-day strikes at Metroline, London United (RAPT group) and Arriva. The sudden willingness of drivers to strike continuously is an overdue response to wage depreciation and deteriorating terms and conditions, for a job with the highest rate of keyworker Covid-causalities. Typically, take-home pay stalls at £33-36,000 for a 70-hour week, and apprentices working on a 3-year training contract can earn as little as £10.22 an hour.
On September 3, Alex Jones, CEO of Arriva jubilantly announced a 11.2% deal after a 90% ballot rejected the original offer of 5%, but there was a catch. The offer was a “compound deal”- backdated to April with a further 5.2% from January 2023.
On September 16, a day before the pay ballot, every worker received a hand-signed circular boldly stating that this was the highest offer in the United Kingdom. It neglected to mention the 11.1% that Arriva drivers in Manchester had pulled off after 29 days of striking from July to August.
Activists immediately swung into action to explain that a “compound-deal” was a stalling mechanism. A new crop of garage militants, many of whom have broken away from Unite and joined the RMT, took to social media. Two well-known commentators produced vlogs that went viral across Arriva’s workforce.
One union activist, known as ‘Jimmy Buses’ said “I’ve calculated my back-pay, and remember I’m at DR04, old contract, and it comes to less than £1,000 on my calculator”. Kev Mustafa, another popular vlogger opined “you won’t even see this money till April next year and it will be more like 8.5 %. In effect you will be paying for your own pay-rise. Alex Jones has tried to blow it up into nice little deal. So, if you’ve got in your mind that it is 11.2% – remember it isn’t”.
A week before the all-out strike drivers’ was due, nerves were frayed. Standing at midnight, at Aldgate East, one driver, Shaz, agreed to talk about the “5% now-5 %” later offer. “They always try to backdate these deals, but they know this is really about covering up our conditions”.
Underlying the dispute was a sense that Arriva misinformation was aimed to blindside drivers and prevent another ongoing strike. “I’ve been with Arriva for 16 years they move us older drivers off-shift during disputes. There are even rumours about pulling my route. I’m a night driver so I’m not going to do a new route on days and go backwards for less pay and more hassle”.
A flurry of management visits to Palmers Green and Tottenham garages indicated how concerned they were that London’s indefinite action would be as rock-solid as in Manchester. For TfL, the bigger picture was that all-out strikes could spread westerly to Metroline and RAPT. Over at Westbourne Park, an activist commented “this Winter the network is at tipping point. The lack of drivers is critical, and the low wages are punitively short of what we need to cope with the cost-of-living”.
He pointed to the fifth £900m bailout for TfL and Sadiq Khan’s warning that a £230m funding gap can only be met by cutting 24 routes and reducing 66 others, “TfL says it has been used as a political football but we know that TfL, the bus companies have presided over 20 years of asset stripping. Since the contracting out of London buses, they have all colluded to keep salaries artificially low to boost profits for multinationals. Now they have hit a brick wall where even government subsidies cannot put drivers on the road if wages don’t rise”
Although Arriva’s parent company, Deutsche Bahn, has just announced a 7% rise in profits, it posted an operating loss of €16billion in 2021. According to the Westbourne Park activist “our endgame now must be renationalisation. The UK directors are having to go back to Berlin and the Far East and account for non-budgeted millions. Until now, drivers’ wages have always been the sacrificial lamb, but this 11% deal shows we are at the point where private contracting has led to no drivers and insufficient buses”
The shock announcement this Friday that Arriva had caved in, was hailed as a victory by most drivers. Steve, a driver of 18 years standing said “on April 1st, inflation was 6.2% so probably we would have asked for 8%!!, We have never had a rise above inflation. If this is what indefinite action can get you all drivers should vote no to 5% pay offers”
Arriva North’s rank and file are trailblazers, invoking the Ford workers who sparked of the Winter of Discontent in 1978 with their 17% deal. But for TfL the funding gap and the 8% secured by the Underground unions is a definite crisis. As soon as news broke of Arriva’s climbdown, Kev Mustafa returned to Facebook to urge all 20,000 drivers to vote NO in their pay ballots this week. Victory is secured by playing the indefinite strike card to a definitive conclusion – pay rises that match inflation.
[Photo top from Unite website]
