Arriva Strike

[Bevan Price]

RE: Arriva Strike

(17/11/2017 10:52)Barney Wrote:  Who knows when this dispute will end. Hopefully very soon.

As far as I am aware no Arriva bus driver has been made redundant since the company was established and the biggest problem that these "cowboy operators" (Avon, Cumfybus, HTL etc.?) is recruiting and retaining staff. There aren't many days of the week when I don't see Arriva (or Stagecoach) training vehicles on the road.

You may recall that during the 12-week strike in 1968, many road staff resigned and when the strike was finally resolved the employers were offering cash inducements to former staff to return to their former employment.

Back in 1968, the buses were run (mostly) by councils, who wanted to continue to provide bus services. Now, Arriva is controlled by people in Germany, and mostly, they will be only interested in £££ (or Euros), and keeping "+" symbols on their accounts rather than "-" symbols; they probably care little whether or not people have bus services if those services make a loss.

We have already seen Arriva reduce services that do not make enough money**; their DB parent company has reduced staff levels in rail subsidiary DB Schencker. Nobody can assume that Arriva will always want to operate buses in our area.

** -e.g. Runcorn/Chester withdrawn; Chester/Northwich reduced to hourly; Chester/Ellesmere Port- Liverpool no longer served by Arriva, etc., etc.

Remember one Arthur Scargill, who thought the miners were right to strike. They may have had a good case - but they lost. Remember also what happened to the UK coal industry.

A prolonged bus dispute will only encourage people to find alternative transport (cars, etc.) and it will take a long time to get them back onto buses. (Just as the long ASLEF rail strike in 1955 led to lost rail traffic, and probably helped to bring about the Marples-Beeching closures.)