(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.

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.


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? 

I think Cadbury and Quakers are two examples that debunk the myth that all bosses are evil and all strikes are noble. Evil capitalists have built entire towns with groundbreaking wekfare facilities for their workers (research Saltaire).

A century later, and even Jeremy Corbyn knew it would be political suicide to piffle away his ill gotten tax revenues on silliness like parks and leisure centres for all (especially the poor imigrants starting at the bottom rung), if he did so before making sure the unions were looked after and all work was unionized or nationalised.

History teaches us that if unions had their unfettered way over society, then yes, people really would still be going down pit today, and they would be doing it en masse doing risky life expectency reducing work, unlike the relatively safe largely automated mines that could and should have been brought in during the FIFTIES (see the illustrations in Eagle Annuals of the day) were it not for union obstruction.

Would immigrants or even women even be allowed to drive buses these days if the all powerful transport unions hadn't been swept away as relics?

Bus driving is not an industry per se, the relevant industry is transport and logistics, which, as I said, has been rapidly deprecating the idea that shift working or unsociable hours should carry a high premium, so if bus drivers want more than the industry standard of today, they might want to ask themselves, are they realy worse off than multi-drop HGV drivers being illegally denied access to warehouse toilets, or train drivers having to end shifts hundreds of miles from home at short notice? I think not.

If bus drivers want to harp on about the responsibility of carrying 80 passengers, they ought to honestly engage with the factual observation that wage increases of 10% is incompatible with passenger loads down 20%, and whatever their crap Labour comprehensive education taught them, the shortfall isn't remotely covered by greedily grabbing any and all profit or dividend they can lay their hands on. Just as taxing millionaires 99% on the penny still doesn't even cover a FRACTION of the current NHS budget, let alone the spending commitments of a Corbyn government.

Unions have a lot to answer for some recent exposed failings of collective responsibility to Health and Safety in fatal bus accidents. Too busy thinking up ways to atnagonise and obstruct over pay issues were they? Somehow forgot about that basic of rights, the right to life.

The media harps on about the very well paid train drivers because OF COURSE not a month after we were being told by the sodding RMT that the rail strikes weren't about trains driver's mid level level pay, the drivers went out on strike for better middle rank pay. Huh.

We all well remember the attempts to frame bus drivers and supermarket stackers as key workers, just like nurses. It's what we think about when we see that it is only one of those three sectors that is currently experiencing major strikes allegedly due to the cost of living, and it's the one sector where a long or open ended strike has the potential to get actual key workers fired, or generally disrupt the services those people are providing, if not simply making it harder for those people to make ends meet.

If the tanker drivers went on indefinite strike tomorrow, and the government decided to provide free taxis or private buses for all key workers rather than provide fuel deliveries for bus depots, would the drivers be happy that they were ensurung key workers could get to work, or would they be outraged and expect the government to ensure a strike in one sector didn't effect their ability to continue to be what they are? Privately employed public transport workers. Nice to have, but not irreplaceable in an emergency.