Attempts to get away with stealing £5,000 from First Manchester bus drivers have escalated after police were sent to support the Company. Striking workers at the Rusholme Depot who are in their 13th week of industrial action over pay inequality at the company have been manhandled and intimidated by police officers who have been called in to undermine their legitimate strike and reasonable demands. The police are using force and the threat of force to undermine the strike and get scabs out on the road for First Manchester.

The Rusholme workers are paid less than workers at other depots that do exactly the same work. The workers, who have to pay the same for petrol, food and rent as their colleagues, have rightfully asked that they are paid the same money for the same job – the Company thinks this is unfair! In fact, the Company is desperately attempting to get away with preventing the Rusholme drivers from being paid the extra £5,000 that every other driver gets. The Company want to keep the money of Rusholme workers in their own pockets.

Rusholme drivers are asking for a pay rise of £1.45 an hour, to bring their pay closer into line with other drivers. They also ask that the Company guarantee that pay is brought fully into line with colleagues by 2020. Offers from the Company have been miserable and rightly rejected by workers.

Whilst refusing to pay drivers an extra £1.45 p/h the latest accounts for First Manchester Limited show fat pay outs to four Directors totalling £283,000 (and in 2016: £641,000)!
First Group PLC the ultimate parent Company has promised to make payments to First Manchester to ensure the Company can meet its obligations. A cursory glance at the accounts (available from Companies House.gov.uk) by any worker will give cause for concern that only such payments will make First Manchester a going concern. That is because the bank account appears very close to being empty now that all the Directors have had their share and money has been siphoned off to the PLC. One wonders whether the Company intends to do the dirty on both workers and the public in the near future when the tender is up.

The government’s solution to the fragmentation, unaccountability and petty rivalries that privatisation inevitably breeds is more privatisation! Of course this is resisted by workers who need to earn enough to live. When the state uses police and the threat of violence and arrest to prevent workers from fighting for better pay it is clear that the police and government are against the people.

Paul Jackson, a bin man in Birmingham who was on strike with Unite comrades this summer has this advice for striking bus workers: “you must apply political pressure yourselves, don’t expect Corbyn or McDonnell to come to your rescue, we never saw them on the picket lines. Don’t let Labour party members inside and outside the union prevent you from taking on the establishment, from opposing unjust laws and rallying the people of Manchester to your cause. The police and the bus company will fail in their attempts to deny you what is rightfully yours, in unity there is strength, I hope other First Manchester drivers will come to your aid!”

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