Strike action by around 2,000 bus drivers at Metroline and Stagecoach in Greater Manchester due to take place today, Saturday and Monday has been suspended at the last minute through the intervention of Labour mayor Andy Burnham, in collaboration with Unite the union’s leadership.
The most notable feature of this intervention is the secrecy involved over the revised offers to be balloted on by bus drivers. Only last week, Metroline and Stagecoach workers rejected derisory new proposals from the private operators: among the largest and most profitable bus companies in the UK.
The suspension was announced yesterday evening, reported by the Manchester Evening News. A press release was only put out by Unite today, lacking any information on the proposed deals.
As a matter of principle, strikes should not be called off until workers have discussed and agreed a deal. This is an attempt to foist on members an agreement worked out between the companies and the union in secret.
Referring to these backroom talks, Burnham declared, “We’ve been working hard to get to this point and are pleased Unite has called off this weekend’s strikes. We are hopeful that an agreement between operators and the union can be reached quickly to avoid further action.”
If the new offers are such an improvement, why are they being treated as a state secret? The entire process is being orchestrated by Burnham and the Unite bureaucracy to wear down resistance and divide workers, company by company, preventing a unified struggle.
The latest round of now-suspended walkouts was pushed for by workers in open defiance of Burnham’s earlier efforts to shut down the strike. Two weekends ago, he organised closed-door talks with Unite officials and private operators—including First Bus—to broker new offers. He boasted that his efforts had secured “real progress”, seeing strikes suspended for ballots at Stagecoach and First Bus last week.
Metroline’s 1,000 drivers at four garages refused to suspend their action against a repackaged substandard deal raising pay by 8.8 percent over two years, instead of 3.5 percent for one. Following the ballots, 1,000 Stagecoach drivers at three garages joined them.
At First Bus, 110 drivers at Rochdale accepted a revised deal for a headline 20 percent increase staggered over six months, covering the next two years. Workers earning £15 an hour will see this rise to £17 on weekdays, £18 on Saturdays and £19 on Sundays from January, with a further £1 increase in April.
An initial wave of strikes, from September 19–22, had paralysed two-thirds of bus services operated by the three companies under Burnham’s flagship Bee Network, exposing the reality of his so-called “integrated” transport system: a franchising model run for private profit.
Unite the union—in name only
After collaborating with Burnham to suspend last week’s strikes, Unite officials have continued working hand-in-glove with the companies and the mayor’s office. The headline of Unite’s October 3 press release did not even mention the renewed strikes by Stagecoach and Metroline drivers—over 90 percent of those still in dispute. Instead, it declared, “First Manchester strike called off after ‘exceptional’ pay deal win.”
Having used the usual smoke-and-mirrors approach to dress up the deal at First Bus, Unite stated that it “goes a long way to addressing the fact that these workers were the lowest paid drivers in the region”—an acknowledgement that it failed to meet the basic criteria of achieving pay parity.
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham hailed the agreement as an “exceptional” victory. It is another gift to the corporations accepting their bogus claims about what is “affordable.” FirstGroup recorded £204 million in operating profit last year while shareholder dividends rose 45 percent.
Unite’s press release buried, as a footnote, the “overwhelming” rejection by Stagecoach drivers of the revised offer—without providing specific figures—and made only a cursory reference to Metroline drivers completing their three days of strikes after refusing to even ballot on the company’s risible new proposals.
Unite’s refusal to issue a unified pay demand is deliberate, allowing Stagecoach and Metroline to return with piecemeal offers that chip away at the dispute depot by depot. This is part of its standard playbook used nationally to shut down a potential strike movement. The union has claimed similar “wins” elsewhere after calling off action for slightly improved offers that fall well short of what could be achieved through determined collective struggle.
Around 500 Stagecoach drivers at Birkenhead, Chorley and Preston had strikes called off after accepting deals raising pay to just £16.50 an hour. In Birkenhead this is spread over two years, despite drivers previously earning only £14.94—among the lowest in the group.
In Bristol, 600 First West of England drivers accepted a two-year backdated deal totalling 8.6 percent, from £16 to £17.40 an hour.
More than 1,000 Go-Ahead drivers at Brighton and Crawley saw strikes scrapped for a 5.2 percent rise, with one depot receiving 7 percent.
Franchising: not “public control” but managed privatisation
The unified strike vote by Unite members across Greater Manchester’s three bus companies showed that workers were looking to wage a determined fight to reverse decades of declining pay and fragmented conditions since privatisation. But Burnham and Unite have worked together to sell the illusion that the new franchising powers handed to the Greater Manchester authority in 2023 marked a return to “public control.”
The new framework is merely a more managed form of privatisation. While the Labour-controlled authority sets fares, timetables and routes, operations remain in private hands, with companies driving down wages and conditions to maximise profit.
The Bee Network’s uniform branding conceals the same race to the bottom. When Burnham calls for an “affordable deal,” he does so as a representative of the most right-wing Labour government in post-war history, deepening its alliance with big business against the working class.
Despite Graham’s rhetoric about bus companies “lining their pockets,” Unite has made no call to take public transport out of private hands as doing so would cut across Labour’s pro-market agenda and threaten the union bureaucracy’s privileged role within this corporatist framework.
Instead, Unite seeks a permanent seat at the franchising table—alongside ministers, council leaders and corporate executives—as the model is rolled out from Greater Manchester and London across England and Wales. This “partnership,” dressed up as “influence,” is incompatible with a genuine fight to reverse the impact of privatisation: the fragmentation of bus workers into countless pay scales and sets of conditions for doing the same job as part of an essential public service.
The way forward
Burnham’s latest intervention, in collusion with Unite, to suppress resistance to the private operators underscores the need for workers to take the dispute into their own hands. The Labour mayor’s constant references to working with “trade union colleagues” are made to justify a corporatist stitch-up: closed-door meetings with the union bureaucracy to override the membership and sabotage a genuine fight.
Stagecoach and Metroline drivers should form a joint strike committee—independent of Unite’s bureaucracy—to unify their struggle across depots and companies. This should be the first step towards a broader mobilisation of all transport workers under the Bee Network.
A direct challenge must be made to the claim that workers’ demands are “unaffordable”, with Burnham adding that “the region and country are not awash with money.” Millions are being siphoned off by private operators—funds that should go toward decent wages, improved services and affordable fares.
The fight for decent pay and working conditions can be won only through the independent mobilisation of rank-and-file workers, free from the control of the Unite apparatus and in opposition to the Labour authority. This struggle must aim to place public transport under democratic workers’ control, organised to serve social need, not private profit.
We urge all Metroline, Stagecoach and First Bus workers to write in to the World Socialist Web Site with information on the contents of the “improved offers” and their working conditions, as part of the conversation on the need for a rank-and-file fightback.