First Bus Ongoing Strikes in Fareham

The News, Portsmouth

Bus drivers from First Bus at the Hoeford depot are striking over pay and working conditions. The strikes continued today Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at the Hoeford depot in Gosport Road, Fareham and Fareham Bus Station.

Transcript

00:00I'm Kevin Lister, branch chairman for Hoford Depot here.

00:04Brilliant. Tell me what we're doing here.

00:08We're on strike, we're trying to make a stand for better working conditions mainly. It's not what

00:14the company is saying, it's not all about pay, it's about the conditions that the company ripped

00:18away from us after Covid. After Covid, the company came to us and said they needed to recover from

00:25Covid, so they issued a letter of fire and rehire and they stripped all our conditions away and

00:32we're asking for some of them back. Last year, the group turnover was £5 billion. First bus,

00:39they made a profit of £287 million. What we're after is full duty value, less 30 minutes.

00:48At the moment, we're expected to do unpaid work, so when we come into fair and for our breaks,

00:54as soon as we pull onto the stand, we stop getting paid. We still have to empty the bus,

00:59we have to take all the money and take it down to the machines, pay all that in. All that is unpaid

01:06and that's what we're asking for, to be paid for the job that we're doing.

01:10Tell me what the reaction's been like during the strike.

01:13The reaction from the staff has been pretty good.

01:16Continuously, we've been emailing the company to get back around the table.

01:24They keep saying the door's open, they're always prepared to negotiate.

01:28However, there's nothing to give. They're fixated on this two-year deal. It's just not acceptable.

01:38So just tell me how the passengers have been affected with the ongoing strike.

01:42The buses have been affected roughly, normally on a weekday, there's 80 to 85 buses that run

01:50out of Oakford during the last couple of days. Once the schools have come back,

01:56service-wise, there's roughly about 20 service buses running. It's a major impact.

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