Stagecoach bus drivers vote to accept pay deal

BUS workers have hailed as a victory a deal reached in their battle over pay with the Stagecoach company.

Drivers at Rawmarsh and Barnsley depots, who are members of the Unite union, voted to accept a new offer of a pay rise to £9.05 an hour, plus £130 back pay.

It came after after staging 12 strike days, mounting picket lines and a march through Barnsley town centre.

Union officials said the previous offer did not include back pay.

It also involved a number of strings that would have removed benefits from drivers.

These strings have now been withdrawn.

The drivers had originally been demanding a 26p an hour rise to £9 an hour. They claimed they were the lowest paid drivers in south Yorkshire.

Some 251 drivers voted to accept the new offer, with 35 drivers against.

The drivers received support unions across South Yorkshire and beyond, including the lecturers’ UCU, teachers’ NUT, civil servants’ PCS and the firefighters’ FBU.

Tony Rushforth, Unite branch secretary at the Barnsley depot, said: “I am very proud of the members who refused to give in and who stood solid to the end.

“I would also like to express my gratitude to all those who supported us through this strike including Barnsley trades council and all the other union branches who made donations.

“All this amounts to some fantastic demonstrations of solidarity. Thank you all—we will never forget what you have all done.”

Stagecoach Yorkshire Managing Director Paul Lynch welcomed the deal but claimed it was worth less than originally offered.

He said: “We are pleased that the union has accepted our latest offer and we now look forward to putting this matter behind us.

“Most importantly, it means that our passengers will no longer have their bus services disrupted by unnecessary strike action.

“Throughout this industrial action we continued to run services for our customers by drafting in staff from across the UK.

“However, we are disappointed that our passengers have had to endure such a long-running dispute even though our pay offers were good ones—and the deal which has ultimately been agreed is, as we always said it would be, actually worth a little less than we offered before strike action began.

“Nevertheless we are glad to have an agreement and we now look forward to getting on with what we do best—providing high quality bus services for people in Yorkshire.”