Almost a poison yellow pill
First Group are the largest yellow school bus operator in the US, with a fleet of over 20,000 buses that carry over 2m students every school day. In the UK their success with yellow school buses has been limited, although this might change when the current Education Bill eventually get approved.
For all their US success in the school transportation sector, First Group have been engaged in a very public spat with two powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Basically, the unions want to be able to recruit members at First’s US subsidiaries, and have brought their campaign directly to the UK. They have done this by forming a coalition of shareholders, led by the Trades Union Councils Pension Fund, who have sponsored a resolution to be put to shareholders at First’s Annual General Meeting, which takes place each year in Aberdeen.
The resolution calls on the company to adopt the International Labour Organisation’s ‘Declaration on the Fundamental Principals and Rights at Work’.
This is a very sophisticated and potentially damaging international campaign, that links the local Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) with two of America’s most powerful and militant unions. For all their posturing and claims of relevance in the modern workplace, a union like the Teamsters seem reluctant to shed their unsavoury history and outdated ideas. Their logo, a spoked wooden wheel surrounded by two horses’ heads, seems to show their leadership are more interested in paying homage to the legacy of Jimmy Hoffa and The Godfather, than to representing their members’ interests in the twenty-first century.
First Group say they are not anti-union, but want any industrial action taken by employees who are union members to be based on secret ballots. This simple point seems anathema to the both the Teamsters and SEIU and by implication to their local supporters in the TUC and TGWU.
In any organisation, there will always be disputes and disagreements, and unions can play an important role in mediating these. But, trying to impose a politically driven international agenda on a listed company, under guise of shareholder activism, is a very dangerous precedent. It’s very unlikely any of the TGWU really believed the resolution would pass.
What this really shows is evidence that unions like the TGWU have decided (mistakenly) that public media campaigns are more likely to be effective in pursuing their agendas than negotiating directly with employers. Aside from the PR stunt at First’s AGM, this strategy is evident with the TGWU’s £1m campaign against Peugeot’s decision to close their plant at Ryton in Coventry.
As part of this dispute, they have purchased 500 outdoor billboard sites from Clear Channel and JCDecaux, as well as buying print advertising in various media, to try and bring pressure on Peugeot to reverse its decision. Interestingly, their plans for a radio campaign failed because unions can only advertise their services to members under Section 15 of the Radio Advertising Standards code.
First Group’s workers have rights, but so do the company’s shareholders and managers. At their Aberdeen meeting, Resolution 15 was resoundingly defeated and now the company, its US workers and their local unions, can start addressing more substantive local issues.