North East Buses

(13 Oct 2022, 2:31 pm)idiot wrote [ -> ]What does the term scab mean?

Someone who breaks a picket line.

It's an archaic term dating back to the 1500s when it was a pretty horrific insult based on the look of someone.

Came to prominence in the mining disputes in the 80s but outside of dated union leader talk - its very rarely used in day to day anymore.

Tanks for the replies.

(13 Oct 2022, 2:24 pm)Ambassador wrote [ -> ]£11 an hour is roughly £21k, that is a take home of roughly £18k per year after tax and insurance. Then you might have union fees on top of that. So monthly thats £1500 with weekend working, unsociable hours and the general public. That's to cover your rent/mortgage, soaring energy bills, perhaps a car, food shop and not much left over.

I personally wouldn't do it and I don't think I'd cope on that salary - irregardless of that I could get a nice cushy call centre job for more money with no stress. They are equally desperate to recruit.

Whilst I think the Unions demands are a tad unreasonable its obviously a starting point to meet in the middle with - pretty much like the trains however, life goes on, people adapt - they just won't return to buses and the industry will continue its death spiral

And that's what you can get on benefits these days if you know how to play the game, so why would you bother to work? There's absolutely no incentive to actually go to work. I know a couple who have 3 kids, on paper they live separately to maximise the benefits, and they get about £3k a month between them.

Looks like services back to normal next week now

The head of Stagecoach North East has been driving through the strikes, maybe cut his pay for the month and see how he likes it. While hes criticising them for not accepting 4% this year!

(13 Oct 2022, 4:29 pm)Acky81 wrote [ -> ]Looks like services back to normal next week now

Yes, didn't know if it'd been announced but the strike starting 9.30 on Monday has been cancelled - notice handed in for one on the 28th though.

(13 Oct 2022, 5:04 pm)Unber43 wrote [ -> ]The head of Stagecoach North East has been driving through the strikes, maybe cut his pay for the month and see how he likes it. While hes criticising them for not accepting 4% this year!

Why? I'd imagine passengers currently have more respect for him being out driving than they do for the drivers who aren't.

My mother, who has been known to vote Labour, and is currently in a union, was going on about Royal Mail being on strike today, and let's just say at this point her opinion of them isn't far away from mine!

And if it were me running it, I'd sooner shut the company down and have them all lose their job than bend over to them.

Right. Steve Walker's shut down Busways - what happens next for him? He's not got a job either. What about the SC group, given reports SCNE is making money (and not just on the verge of breaking even), I doubt the group would be best pleased, and I'm sure everyone in Sunderland would rather the current whatever they're doing this week to no bus service whatsoever.

Oh and let's not mention that Newcastle and South Shields will lose the vast majority of their service.

What about those who aren't in the union who are driving buses and helping keep your company make money - why should they lose their jobs too? Why should people who accepted the offer lose their jobs?

(13 Oct 2022, 6:01 pm)streetdeckfan wrote [ -> ]Why? I'd imagine passengers currently have more respect for him being out driving than they do for the drivers who aren't.

My mother, who has been known to vote Labour, and is currently in a union, was going on about Royal Mail being on strike today, and let's just say at this point her opinion of them isn't far away from mine!

And if it were me running it, I'd sooner shut the company down and have them all lose their job than bend over to them.

Maybe they just want a fair wage, seems as tho they are working at one of the most profitable depots in the country. 

Tbf I'd imagine the Head of SCNE wouldn't be able to okay a pay rise without another department okaying it.

(13 Oct 2022, 6:19 pm)Unber43 wrote [ -> ]Maybe they just want a fair wage, seems as tho they are working at one of the most profitable depots in the country. 

Tbf I'd imagine the Head of SCNE wouldn't be able to okay a pay rise without another department okaying it.

Here's a controversial opinion, maybe they already have a fair wage?

They're already getting paid 20% more an hour than supermarket workers and delivery drivers, and they seem to manage fine without whinging. Plus, they do more than sit around all day!


(I may just be trying to cause drama...)

don't take the bait....

don't do it....

(13 Oct 2022, 6:33 pm)streetdeckfan wrote [ -> ]Here's a controversial opinion, maybe they already have a fair wage?

They're already getting paid 20% more an hour than supermarket workers and delivery drivers, and they seem to manage fine without whinging. Plus, they do more than sit around all day!


(I may just be trying to cause drama...)

ASDA's delivery drivers are very likely going to be going on strike soon aswell

(13 Oct 2022, 1:25 pm)Driver9*** wrote [ -> ]Spoken by someone who has never spent a day in his life driving buses. I bet you have some romantic notion of the job whereby all the passengers and car drivers are nice to you and you wave at the bus spotters with a cheery grin on your face as you drive by. The reality is far different.

I've got plenty of mates who drive a bus, and I see first hand every day what their job is like.

I recently did a driving job and was quite surprised how much I preferred the "stress" of simply being stuck in traffic or not having a convenience convenient, as opposed to the stresses of my other fixed location jobs (RSI, productivity targets, unpredictable activity, manual handling).

I currently earn under £10ph, and I rationalise such a shit wage in part because at least I don't have to put up with the general public. My view on that even changed a little when my limited interactions with the public in that role were 99% positive. I found it helps when you are doing something that helps them and are doing it in a cheery way, not letting whatever problem is affecting you affect them, even when, especially when, it might be something they did that caused your problem.


Not to mention the fact this strike is allegedly about their wage apparently not being enough to live on, rather than the conditions under which they have to work (and have done for at least twenty years I would say).

I look around these days and I don't get the impression drivers are all that stressed, with one last week looking pretty rain chuffed with himself as he swanned off to his break, having driven his bus early for the last 5 miles of his route. That driver afaik voted to strike recently.

Any driver that thinks they could cut it in a call centre, try it. I would say with some certainty that of a 100 drivers that went to a call centre, perhaps 1 would still be in the job this time next year, having either been fired or absolutely hated the job. In the other direction, I would say the figure could be easily as high as 10, which is probably close to the industry standard for retention, in a notoriously stressful and depressing job.

My cousin was a call centre employee. She coped with the stress by being so good at her job she worked her way up into management, meaning that in ten short years she has turned a shit set of GCSE results into a wage that bus drivers would call luxuriant. Yet she and her partner still voluntarily work long hours in stressful jobs, because that's how they were raised is what you do when you have responsibilities, like a house and kids.

I doubt there are many drivers, certainly at Sunderland by the looks of it, who have the same outlook on life.

I actually recall with some wry amusement in context, that some twenty years ago I was turned down for a bus driving job (psv training included) because in all likelihood they deemed me over qualified, or simply unable to comprehend why someone with a relatively cushy desk job would want the switch to driving.

The desk jobs steadily dissappeared due to globalisation, and so now I find myself in a job most bus drivers would find too hard or boring, and certainly too poorly paid. Had I got that job, it seems likely I'd have worked my way up to cushy continental coach driving by now, all by staying with that one company.

My dad was a truck driver, multi drop supermarkets. I recently saw on trucknet, one such agency driver counting his absolute good fortune to have found his way into a National Holidays type (UK only) driving job, even now, when his job is very well paid and he's never going to be short of work, his only legitimate gripes being perhaps that the overtime rate isn't all that, and it's less secure than permanent work, if you forgot for a moment that overtime rates and job security are down across the board, as a decades long trend.

To quote the political class, if they were to broaden their minds and consider other people's lives and the history of work in general, I put it to the floor that Sunderland bus drivers have never has it so good, all things considered, in terms of wage, conditions, prospects and job security. On the latter, even Jesmond drivers have a more legitimate right to strike this week, and nobody seriously believes they're doing so out of a realistic prospect of large numbers of forced redundancies coming down the line.

Would you look at that, Royal Mail have announced 6000 job loses directly attributed to the losses made due to the strike action that's been taken.
Hopefully it's the ones that went on strike that are out the door first so the innocent ones who actually did their job don't go!

(13 Oct 2022, 3:41 pm)streetdeckfan wrote [ -> ]And that's what you can get on benefits these days if you know how to play the game, so why would you bother to work? There's absolutely no incentive to actually go to work. I know a couple who have 3 kids, on paper they live separately to maximise the benefits, and they get about £3k a month between them.

Based on today's Universal Credit rates, minus Housing Support, they'd be entitled to just shy of £1,153 per month between them - even if they were playing the system.

Not sure where the other £1,847 will be coming from, unless they're taking their game to the next level and putting on a show at PIP assessments, which would still leave them short even if they were placed on the highest levels of support.

(14 Oct 2022, 7:16 am)streetdeckfan wrote [ -> ]Would you look at that, Royal Mail have announced 6000 job loses directly attributed to the losses made due to the strike action that's been taken.
Hopefully it's the ones that went on strike that are out the door first so the innocent ones who actually did their job don't go!

And so did Network Rail. It's a bargaining tool to scare people back into work.

Royal Mail would be even more fucked if they even tried to lay off 6000 staff.

I think there are more than 6000 royal mail employees on strike tbh.

There was always going to be job cuts at the Royal Mail, regardless of striking . It was inevitable once they were privatised. I know people at Doxford who were happy chatting about their shares windfall. I warned them that what happened in the energy supply industry (job cuts) , the same would happen in RM.

(14 Oct 2022, 7:16 am)streetdeckfan wrote [ -> ]Would you look at that, Royal Mail have announced 6000 job loses directly attributed to the losses made due to the strike action that's been taken.
Hopefully it's the ones that went on strike that are out the door first so the innocent ones who actually did their job don't go!

Not to go too off topic, but I do find your views on this incredibly naive and 6th form level of politics.

Although you are atypically right wing and misinfomed - you are incredibly naive and fallen straight into a Daily Mail reader trap of believing the rhetoric. It's a blatant attempt to crush the strike and divert away from the fact RM now have major shareholders, targets and profit margins to meet. 

RM made £758m last year, it paid £400m to shareholders and £2m on average in bonuses. They split the business into 2 parts and don't share how profitable the other half is...that doesn't fit the narrative.

I don't see why you are celebrating the fact that workers are generally powerless against owners and that all our working conditions are being made worse.

(14 Oct 2022, 7:58 am)omnicity4659 wrote [ -> ]Based on today's Universal Credit rates, minus Housing Support, they'd be entitled to just shy of £1,153 per month between them - even if they were playing the system.

Not sure where the other £1,847 will be coming from, unless they're taking their game to the next level and putting on a show at PIP assessments, which would still leave them short even if they were placed on the highest levels of support.

I was including the housing support which would be another £300-400 a month, unless you also exclude the amount you'd pay in rent/mortgage when you calculate how much you earn.

As they were technically living separately, they were able to make two separate claims, one with two children and one with one. Granted, they essentially had a second house sitting empty rather than the extra £300 in their pocket, but it's still quite a bit!

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(14 Oct 2022, 11:10 am)Ambassador wrote [ -> ]Not to go too off topic, but I do find your views on this incredibly naive and 6th form level of politics.

Although you are atypically right wing and misinfomed - you are incredibly naive and fallen straight into a Daily Mail reader trap of believing the rhetoric. It's a blatant attempt to crush the strike and divert away from the fact RM now have major shareholders, targets and profit margins to meet. 

RM made £758m last year, it paid £400m to shareholders and £2m on average in bonuses. They split the business into 2 parts and don't share how profitable the other half is...that doesn't fit the narrative.

I don't see why you are celebrating the fact that workers are generally powerless against owners and that all our working conditions are being made worse.

As I've said in the past, I'm just exaggerating my views, mainly for fun, but also because if someone doesn't play devils advocate you just end up in an echo chamber! Which was clearly happening judging by the conversations further up!

As for the Daily Mail, even I wouldn't stoop that low! I actually believe in reading news articles from a variety of sources with different biases to get the full picture.

I may be right wing, but I ain't an idiot!

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So if bus driving is so good then, why are so many drivers leaving?

(14 Oct 2022, 3:09 pm)Driver9*** wrote [ -> ]So if bus driving is so good then, why are so many drivers leaving?

More pay doing HGV?


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(13 Oct 2022, 6:33 pm)streetdeckfan wrote [ -> ]Here's a controversial opinion, maybe they already have a fair wage?

They're already getting paid 20% more an hour than supermarket workers and delivery drivers, and they seem to manage fine without whinging. Plus, they do more than sit around all day!

(I may just be trying to cause drama...)

I note the small print, but even you must admit that we'd be a poorer country, without the history of fighting for the rights that we enjoy today.

It's incredible that whenever a group of workers want to fight to better themselves, that people instantly compare them to supermarket workers, care workers, nurses or whoever else. Same way as the media always go back to train driver pay, when talking about RMT workers (including cleaners, porters, etc) on strike. 

We really need to get out of this mindset that it's a race to the bottom and that we must always compare ourselves with shitty wages in other sectors.

(14 Oct 2022, 4:54 am)Starscream wrote [ -> ]To quote the political class, if they were to broaden their minds and consider other people's lives and the history of work in general, I put it to the floor that Sunderland bus drivers have never has it so good, all things considered, in terms of wage, conditions, prospects and job security. On the latter, even Jesmond drivers have a more legitimate right to strike this week, and nobody seriously believes they're doing so out of a realistic prospect of large numbers of forced redundancies coming down the line.

I can't tell whether you're being serious or you're just incredibly naive. Everything that workers have in this country are a hard-fought victory of Trade Unions. If it wasn't for Unions, our kids would still be getting sent down the pit or up a chimney and people would still be regularly end up dead on the job. No employer does things for the good of workers rights. They do things because they've been forced to, after decades and decade of campaigning.

It's incredible to suggest that 'bus drivers have never had it so good'. You're talking about a headline hourly rate, but not considering that most other industries would pay shift allowance (of at least 20%) for the kind of unsociable shifts that drivers are expected to work, compensating for their lack of work/life balance. You're also ignoring the responsibility of the job, ensuring the safe carriage of up to 80 passengers at a time, the lack of flexibility to take time off, the lack of sanitary facilities in their workplace, physical and verbal assaults whilst working alone, the list goes on. That's why I always find it rich people suggesting they'd do the job for X, but then don't. 

It's also worth remembering that as key workers, bus drivers were expected to work as normal (with no enhancement) throughout COVID, ensuring that that other key workers could continue to travel to their place of work. Or did we seriously think that clapping on our doorsteps on a weekly basis was enough? 

(14 Oct 2022, 3:09 pm)Driver9*** wrote [ -> ]So if bus driving is so good then, why are so many drivers leaving?

Exactly. Voting with their feet, as they say.

I get people are a bit miffed at the disruption, but I didn't think people would be so miffed they'd dig up an old YouTube video from 2013 (filmed in **1999**) and moan in all caps about "the good old days" when there were no strikes from Stagecoach...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLNR98fTL7A

OK no bad language I heard when at bus stop but shouting when little kids are about is very intimating

I have seen several videos on Youtube of Stagecoach Striking Drivers, giving abuse to those driving the buses.


I know Streetdeckfan said something about SC Drivers earning enough and tbf I do actually agree with him they are getting £3 an hour above minimum wage, I would get if they wanted an extra 50p an hour. However I do think the Strike is needed Wheatshef is a very profitable depot and they are on £12.17, Liverpool (not sure how profitable) are on £14 thats not fair.

(14 Oct 2022, 3:48 pm)Adrian wrote [ -> ]I note the small print, but even you must admit that we'd be a poorer country, without the history of fighting for the rights that we enjoy today.

Come on Adrian, you know I could never admit to such a thing in public! I have to keep up appearances as a heartless Tory!

(14 Oct 2022, 5:00 pm)Unber43 wrote [ -> ]I have seen several videos on Youtube of Stagecoach Striking Drivers, giving abuse to those driving the buses.


I know Streetdeckfan said something about SC Drivers earning enough and tbf I do actually agree with him they are getting £3 an hour above minimum wage, I would get if they wanted an extra 50p an hour. However I do think the Strike is needed Wheatshef is a very profitable depot and they are on £12.17, Liverpool (not sure how profitable) are on £14 thats not fair.

Wages shouldn't be tied to the profitability of the depot, but with the cost of living in the area. Ie. pay should be higher in an area that costs more, compared to an area that's relatively cheap to live in.
While I don't know either area, I'd imagine that it's cheaper in Sunderland and the surrounding areas compared to Liverpool?

(14 Oct 2022, 4:23 pm)idiot wrote [ -> ]OK no bad language I heard when at bus stop but shouting when little kids are about is very intimating

They'd not do anything deliberately to make kids feel intimidated, as that isn't the aim of any picket line, but you can see that there's one there a mile off with black and orange flags. Most parents with concerns would take an avoiding route, but personally I'd use it as an educational trip.

(14 Oct 2022, 5:00 pm)Unber43 wrote [ -> ]I have seen several videos on Youtube of Stagecoach Striking Drivers, giving abuse to those driving the buses.

I know Streetdeckfan said something about SC Drivers earning enough and tbf I do actually agree with him they are getting £3 an hour above minimum wage, I would get if they wanted an extra 50p an hour. However I do think the Strike is needed Wheatshef is a very profitable depot and they are on £12.17, Liverpool (not sure how profitable) are on £14 thats not fair.

It's a fact of life that you reap what what you sow, when you decide to cross a picket line. I'd imagine it's mild compared to having to work with those who were out on strike, once the dispute is resolved...