Workers' Liberty

The 12 December issue of Busworkers Punch headlined the wage settlement at Metroline which drivers accepted on 13 December as ‘union sell-out on Metroline’. I beg to disagree. The hourly rate at Metroline going into the dispute was £10.33 an hour; the union asked for £11.00, 6.5%, and achieved 5.75%, £10.93, just 7p short of their claim. That can only be seen as a victory, and it is rightly seen as this in the London bus unions and the wider Labour movement.

The RMT took the initiative in launching a National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) at a meeting on 28th October supported by a raft of TU General Secretaries, including out own Tony Woodley. Its founding conference is pencilled in for 5 May 2007. Sympathetic convenors and officials should call a founding meeting for a London busworkers shop stewards and union activists’ network which would affiliate to the NSSN. Only grass roots involvement by the membership at large will begin to reverse the defeats of the last fourteen years.

WHO'S TO BLAME FOR THE FUCK-UP ON THE BUSES?

After a lot of walking out and speech-making, the main thing
established around the negotiating table across London has been the staggering greed of the bus operators and the current inability of the union to mount a real challenge to this.