trentbarton’s Md has spoken out after Unite announced that 160 bus drivers doing work for trentbarton, in Nottingham and Derbyshire, shall be on strike today (10/09/2018) in protest against “poverty pay.”
On the industrial action Managing Director Jeff Counsell said: “trentbarton incorporates a reputation improving pay for its teams every year. Within the last 11 years in complete, Barton Buses Ltd drivers have obtained pay rises better than the speed of inflation.
“I’m shocked Unite has described our competitive wages as ‘poverty pay’.
“Many of the Barton Buses team are on per hour wage of £11.51 per hour using a guarantee of 39 hours weekly.
“Our starting hourly wage is £9.34, with rises within the first two or four years of employment. All rates are significantly killing the National Living Wage (£7.83) as well as ‘Real Living Wage’ (£8.75).
“Our teams even have the ability to volunteer for overtime, and those driving evening services earn £14.99 every hour.
“It’s disappointing that individuals find ourselves facing industrial action by a few persons in our team, especially due to the fact you will find there’s good reputation for improving pay on top of the higher level of inflation in the past 11 years.
“At any given time when our business, like so many others, is facing tough trading conditions and increased costs, we feel our offer to extend pay by 2.5% to become a top notch one then one that is to be sustainable sometime soon.
“We’re proud being a locally owned independent company. Our operating profits are helpful to invest in our fleet to aid sustain a sophisticated, attractive and desirable transport network. It’s the reason which our customer happiness scores are usually the highest in great britain.
“Really is endless our drivers who are members of Unite will recognise that industrial action will not likely help anybody – not them or their fellow drivers, not our customers but not one’s destiny sustainability with their employer.
“trentbarton aims to become transparent during pay reviews to build a trusting partnership. And the union has long been thinking about the pay review, trentbarton has implemented both the.5% increase which was paid since June and backdated to March 2018.
“I have a sincere apology to prospects that happen to be plagued by the commercial action. I’m going to let our customers are aware that we’ll be going after everything we could to minimise disruption, and we’ll work tough to keep everyone moving.”
