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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