Unite members to challenge First Group over pay freeze and strike
tricks at AGM
14th July 2009
WHERE: Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre, Bridge of
Don, AB23 8BL
WHEN: Thursday, 16th July 2009 at 10:30am
Hundreds of Unite members will demonstrate at the First Group
AGM this week (Thursday, 16th) in Aberdeen over the 0 per cent pay
freeze imposed by the board in all of its UK bus subsidiaries, and
to highlight the tricks the company are deploying to get around a
strike.
Unite’s 20,000 members who work for First Group are incensed
with the 'zero per cent pay policy', which means no pay rise this
year even though the company has been making huge profits for
years. First Group PLC made £200m profit before tax in March
2009.
Unite says that a profitable company cannot use the recession to
make its employees pay for further rises in dividend payments for
its shareholders, but with the company seeking to impose the
freeze, it looks set to be embroiled in a series of rolling strikes
across the country.
The protest comes on the same day as nearly 500 of First's bus
drivers in Aberdeen, the company's international headquarters, take
strike action as shareholders make their way to the city.
However, First has sent instructions to all local bus
subsidiaries that they should supply a quota from their management
teams to travel to Aberdeen to work on the strike day. Unite
says the aim is to make it look like some sort of bus service is
running on the day of the AGM, tricking shareholders into thinking
that the strike has been broken.
According to Unite, First is looking to get 50 managers to fly
to Aberdeen today (Tuesday), where they will be put up in local
hotels. Tomorrow (Wednesday) they will be ferried around Aberdeen
in cars to learn the local routes and on Thursday, First are to try
to provide a free bus service to the public from 7am until 7pm. The
managers will then fly back to their homes on Friday.
An astonished Unite regional official in Aberdeen, Tommy
Campbell, told the company that: “Given First Group’s huge
operating profits of 38 per cent, and the incredible expense of
trying to break this strike, a rise of 4 per cent on staff pay is
not an unaffordable pay settlement. We are available to talk at
anytime.”
Unite national organiser for passenger transport, Graham
Stevenson, says that workers from all over the UK are mobilising to
join their colleagues in Aberdeen at the protest: “No doubt the
achievement of a 'Zero Pay Policy' on bus workers’ pay will add up
to a tidy sum in management bonuses.
“We thought the era of fat-cats and boardroom bonuses was
supposed to be over, clearly not.
“Bus workers' pay has dropped massively since deregulation and
privatisation. Remorselessly, for over a decade, this decline
continued. Yet, we see the board of First is proposing to the AGM a
shareholder dividend rise of 10 per cent. This is now the fifth
consecutive year that First has increased dividends by 10 per cent.
It's clearly ‘10 per cent for them, nothing for us’.
“The board has decided that a recession means that bus workers
no long need to have pay increases, especially if this interferes
with their ability to ensure that shareholders get what they think
should be coming to them. Quite simply, we ask them to think
again.”
Unite is calling for the implementation of a just wages system
to raise bus workers’ earnings, re-establish status to recognise
responsibility and skills and reflect the growing demands of the
job.
At the AGM protest, Unite members will carry placards emblazoned
with images of a `fat-cat’.
ENDS
For more information contact Graham Stevenson on 020 7611 2583
or Graham.Stevenson@uniontheunion.com
or Ashraf Choudhury in the Unite press office on 020 7420 8914 or
07980 224761.
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