Transatlantic winning formula

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When road transport unions in the US and UK worked together, they were able to organise 15,000 workers at FirstGroup. Martin Mayer reports

Global organising does work: that’s the message we heard at a recent meeting of the ITF Road Transport Workers’ Section when we found that more than 15,000 FirstGroup workers had been brought into union membership over the last 18 months in the United States. It was very sweet news after a long and difficult campaign involving trade unions on both sides of the Atlantic in a fight to win union recognition in the face of some of the most hostile anti-union activities ever seen from a transport multinational.

The campaign started more than five years ago. The UK’s Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), with ITF assistance, was approached by the US general union Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for help in organising workers employed in FirstGroup’s yellow school bus companies in the United States. TGWU bus workers leaders were shocked to hear that UK-based transport multinational FirstGroup was apparently using the most vicious and aggressive forms of anti-union behaviour in a desperate bid to keep its FirstStudent yellow school bus operations union free.

Yet this same company, which employs well over 20,000 workers in the UK bus industry, recognises the trade union and regularly negotiates and consults with union representatives elected by the union members. In most UK bus depots owned by FirstGroup, union density exceeds 95 per cent.

The TGWU quickly circulated amongst its UK-based FirstGroup membership the alarming information about how their employer was treating its US staff. This ranged from intimidation, including:

disciplinaries and dismissals of union members who were trying to organise
blatant and hostile anti-union propaganda distributed in depots and posted on company notice boards
one-to-one briefings by managers with workers in which they were urged not to join a union
compulsory works meetings, where workers were subjected to lectures and videos pedalling anti-union propaganda.

Photos of two huge anti-union banners displayed at FirstGroup yellow bus depots gave a graphic illustration to UK union members of the conscious anti-union stance of their employer across the Atlantic.

International solidarity visits

To reinforce the message and develop closer union ties between FirstGroup workers on both sides of the Atlantic, UK union reps in FirstGroup were invited to the US to meet yellow bus workers trying to form a union there. Similarly, FirstGroup workers from the US were brought to the UK to meet TGWU reps and activists. Two female activists from FirstStudent attended a TGWU bus workers’ conference in Eastbourne, England.

When they told their stories of how they had faced intimidation and discrimination for trying to form a union and faced possible disciplinary action on their return, British TGWU union reps began to feel their blood boil.

TGWU union leaders made direct contact with FirstGroup bosses in Aberdeen to voice strong opposition to these activities and to demand it be stopped. But the evasive replies and excuses made it clear that FirstGroup had no intention of ending its concerted anti-union drive in the United States. It became increasingly clear to UK trade unionists that we needed to help our brothers and sisters win union recognition in the US – or face an increasingly US-style anti-union stance in FirstGroup’s UK operations.

Corporate campaign

The focus of the campaign then turned towards a sophisticated and relentless corporate campaign to expose FirstGroup’s anti-union stance in front of its British investors and to politicians and the media. Unlike in the USA, UK companies need to be discreet about anti-union behaviour or face possible consequences damaging to their business. In particular, FirstGroup needs to find favour with government ministers, MPs and local authorities and councillors who are responsible for contracting out rail contracts and tendering local bus services. Corporate investors can get nervous if a company begins to acquire an unfavourable image for bad behaviour towards its workforce. Even Britain’s predominantly right-wing media does not condone extreme forms of anti-union behaviour.

One extremely important tool in this corporate campaign was the fact that many FirstGroup employees in Great Britain were not only TGWU members but also held shares in the company. This was partly because FirstGroup encourages its employees to buy shares at discounted rates, but also because, when the British bus industry was deregulated and privatised, many of its employees were given free FirstGroup shares.

A massive exercise was launched to get TGWU members to pledge their shares in support of a resolution to the FirstGroup Annual General Meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland, where its headquarters are based. TGWU union representatives and SEIU and Teamsters officials, including yellow school bus drivers, attended the meeting and caused a huge impact. Corporate investors began to demand real reform from the company and FirstGroup directors were forced to make promises that anti-union behaviour would stop.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters increasingly took prominence in the latter stages of the campaign as the SEIU began to make a strategic withdrawal to concentrate on other organising targets. And whilst the anti-union behaviour of FirstGroup in the US did not change dramatically at first, the Teamsters found themselves well placed to begin winning the first few union ballots for recognition contracts at US yellow bus yards.

In more recent months the forced workplace meetings have slowed down and the anti-union propaganda has become less vitriolic as shareholder pressure forced the company to moderate its behaviour. Then we saw what the American unions had always told their UK brothers and sisters: if you let US yellow bus workers decide for themselves without interference from their employer, they will vote for the union.

Unionising FirstGroup workers

Union ballots in favour of union recognition contracts have spread across FirstStudent yellow bus yards, bringing 15,000 new workers into union organisation. FirstGroup’s directors have been forced to admit that they have lost the battle to keep FirstStudent, their US yellow bus subsidiary, union free.

Over a third of their yellow bus workforce is now unionised and the Teamsters expect to achieve 50 per cent later this year or early 2010.

The ITF played a crucial facilitating role in this transatlantic organising campaign in FirstGroup. It was the ITF that helped link up the UK and US unions and gave invaluable assistance when required, including involving other unions with an interest in FirstGroup, such as Ireland’s SIPTU and the Dutch transport union FNV Bondgenoten.

Their participation in the campaign made FirstGroup realise the extend of the international union alliance they were facing – and the likely damage it was doing to their bid to expand into European bus and rail operations.

It’s very satisfying when an organising plan comes together, especially when it proves that global union organising really does work. In the case of FirstGroup, bus drivers have reaped the benefits of union solidarity yet again.

Martin Mayer, of the Transport and General Workers’ Union section of Unite, is the chair of the ITF Road Transport Workers’ Section.

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Issue 36 - July 2009

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