Over 1,600 bus drivers based mainly in West London are to go on strike later this month, on the same day as a tube and London Overground strike are taking place.
The Unite union says that the strike action is a result of the bus company, London United, a subsidiary of the French-owned company RATP, only offering a pay increase of 3.6 per cent in 2022 and 4.2 per cent next year. Unless a resolution is offered, the initial strike action will take place on Friday 19th August and Saturday 20th August.
That is also when there’s a mix of national rail, tube and London Overground strikes also taking place.
- Thursday 18th August – national rail strike
- Friday 19th August – London Underground strike
- Saturday 20th August – national rail strike
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Unite’s members play a crucial role in keeping London moving and they are not going to accept seeing their pay constantly eroded.”
The strike action, if it goes ahead, will affect workers based at the following London United bus depots:
- Fulwell
- Routes: 33, 65, 71, 85, 281, 290, 371, 481, 671, 681, K3, N33 and N65
- Hounslow
- Routes: 110, 111, 117, 203, 419, E1, H22, H32, H37 and H98
- Hounslow Heath
- Routes: 105, 116, 216, 400, 411, 423, 635, 663, 696, 697, KU1, KU2 and KU3
- Park Royal
- Routes: 18, 220, 223, 224, 258, 266, 440, N18 and N266.
- Shepherd’s Bush
- Routes: 49, 70, 72, 94, 148, C1 and N72
- Stamford Brook
- Routes: 9, 211, 272, 283, E3, H91 and N9
- Tolworth
- Routes: 265, 293, 404, 406, 418, 465, 467, 470, 613, 662, 665, K1, K2, K4 K5 and S3
There is also an ongoing strike ballot being carried out by Unite affecting Arriva drivers on bus routes across east and north London.
They need to stop holding London hostage and the travelling public why should they be so special and get extra money when other people has to get on with it
Or at least be honest with the fare-paying passengers and ask us Londoners for the fares to go up!
Or rather the bosses need to stop taking advantage of their workers, trousering big profits, fleecing the public purse…there you are corrected it for you.
Other people don’t have to get on with it. They can also demand better renumeration and conditions.
Maybe we need to learn from them and form unions to escape our rubbish wages in times of inflation !!! Stop being so apathetic about everything!
You are absolutely right! They already have enormous benefits compared to any other worker and with their “blackmail” strikes they only create problems to people who need to go to work.
They rob people blind through fares and claim they don’t have enough to match pay to inflation for their drivers.
Or passengers should claim compensations for not being able to go for a work!
who started claiming for better salaries were not the drivers but the all the other employees that keeps london transport running, they are the ones with shitty salary and they were the ones keeping transport going during pandemic and loads of them died. The drivers are just giving them a hand
You don’t ask, you don’t get.
But the majority of the population has lost decent pensions and likely won’t get a pay rise above (remember them?), at, or below inflation – even at the level apparently already offered our beleaguered and occasionally bolshie boys and girls on the rails and roads and somehow just has to batten down the hatches and get on with it.
Not a good situation for anyone, good on them for trying, but cloth has to be cut accordingly alas.
They don’t batten down the hatches, they just assume they can’t do anything about it, and as a result their pay and conditions get worse whilst those at the top do very well. Perhaps you can learn about solidarity and empathy and maybe avoid clichés such as bolshie.
This is ridiculous. Travel charges increase every year and we passengers are the most victims . Government needs to look in to this matter and stop this nonsense once and for all. I don’t think so the members of the parliament or the the Mayor of London do they feel the public sacrifices . I hate these strikes only in London these things happen. Government needs to take severe action against these unions and stop these nonsense. How many promises were you said to get a peoples vote but the end the people were left to suffer. Can’t take anymore . Bring our national guards ( military) to run the services . Take sever actions on these unions and the workers who are behind this . Three days nightmare . Sorry or apologies by the unions won’t work in this time enough is enough
If yo think strikes only happen in London, then the rest of the UK would like to have a word with you.
hm sounds like those strikes causing such extreme disruption is because these are absolutely essential workers that should be paid accordingly 🙂
“Take sever actions on these unions and the workers who are behind this “
These strikes are only carried out after ballots that have to follow strict legal processes for them to be valid.
If RAPT thought that there was even a sniff of illegality in the unions ballot process they’d have been off to court in an instant to have it declared illegal and run again.
Time and again the government threatens to change the law and to prevent people like bus, tube and train drivers from striking and time after time the government fails to do what it says and change the law.
As for bringing into the military that’s a non starter.
You can’t just plonk anyone with a driving licence into the driving seat of a bus. Bus drivers have to be trained for every route they operate. That’s not something you do in a couple of minutes.
And that’s also the same with tube and train drivers.
Well everyone seems to be at it’s not just the trains but let’s be honest they are the worst for disrupting daily life though surely it’s not too much to ask for around 5% just bit more than the average when shareholders are gaining & top bosses get nice bonuses sometimes hundreds of thousands it makes the employee feel under valued
At least you got the right bus company for your photo, unlike the rest of the media!
I want a union tired of being underpaid whilst our companies make millions off our hard work!we need to wake from this slumber
Hopefully Taxi players also not going on strike
Strike is the way to slowly but firmly suck money from Londoner’s thin economy every year. We should ask for monetary compensation for non service when striking and stop to crowd into alternative buses. May be they realize that each strike means more charge for tax payers. Ironically, the most affected (Londoners) don’t take any action while they disputes greater loaf of monthly rising payed pass… By Londoners!!!
They don’t think about people have to get .who on zero contact. How theyment earn money if they
going . On strike. They don’t care that I need to get work it makes do cross . They earn more than I do . But I don’t go on strike. What about people who need to get hospital appointments. The people going don’t care about one but them self’s.
TFL 🙄
How would you feel if the Nhs went on strike 🤷🏻♀️
A wonder how many of those getting angry at bus drivers know how hard it is being one?
Constant verbal abuse, people walking or cycling in front of your bus causing potential accidents everyday, and all of this for shit pay and unsociable working hours.
And where are the profits going? Is it to the London taxpayer, no. It is to the company who runs the bus company: RAPT (the Parisian transport authority).
Maybe these selfish angry commenters should learn something from bus drivers and join a union themselves, to protect their own pay from the bosses.
(Or maybe – just maybe – some of the people in this comments section hating the bus drivers are ‘the manager class’. Maybe they never even get the bus, but just hate seeing working class people fighting for workers rights and have decided to comment here to make it look like we’re divided!)
Solidarity to bus drivers and all workers fighting for a decent living!
I’m agree with bus drivers to go on strike. People who’s working on office space with air conditioning
should find out how working conditions on 40 degres without fresh water,Irregular unsocial hours, poorly paid.
I’m surprised that many of those who said need go to food banks having full time work does not go on strike too.
Everyone is finding it hard due to inflation and these strikes mean people cant get to work and will lose pay.
Good luck to them and rail staff and others as for years they not received a decent pay rise while the shareholder and CEos cream off the profit.
EG O’Reilly,
Apols, I thought that I’d been less abstruse than I have been.
I’m certainly guilty of entrenched points of view as I reckon is a vast number of us. Much easier just to fall back on stock thought patterns, lazy assumptions, clichés even.
Not got us very far have they? Unedifying tunnel visioned slangfest rather than impassioned argument is almost guaranteed to result in these days of instant gratification and stuff you I got too much to do, can’t even acknowledge anyone else’s existence let alone try to understand you.
I’ve learned that you can never assume and that more and more, the use of a cliché or other shorthand is less and less acceptable.
We do however have to watch ourselves that we’re not marching blindly from an open woodland of free expression through a thorny thicket of proscribed words and thoughts into an endless stand of monocultural spruce trees all the same in every direction with no room for difference and no way out. Owned by a capitalist b*5t@rd for good measure.
Striking because your employer won’t even offer a fair below-inflation payrise after 12+ years of stagnating wages is neither surprising nor wrong.
We must stop swallowing the nonsense about why we can’t all be paid fairly – because it is nonsense – if this government really wants to tackle inflation they can reduce fares, but I’ll bet in January they’ll be hiked extortionately above any pay rises negotiated by unions. Equally the government, now outside the EU, could cut VAT to 10% or lower to help address high prices and thus inflation, but they won’t do that either.
In summary: we are being taken for fools. Many people have had enough of it.