Transcript

[RHYTHMIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC]

KEMAR KNIGHT

My name is Kemar Knight. I’m the Union rep at Park Royal Bus Garage and I represent the drivers day in and day out. Power is in numbers, and by having a Union in place at any workplace-- or per se in this workplace-- it will help drivers to be treated fairly and for no one to feel as if they’re being discriminated or harassed. So basically, it’s to also ensure that the employer is adhering to regulation and legislations under the Employment Act.

The Union will have meetings with directors to basically iron out stuff, identify issues that are happening within the workplace-- not just this depot, but within the whole company itself-- in order to make both the company and the employees that are members to have a reasonable standard of work. And I do understand that the public may not like strike actions or whatever. Sometimes, it’s essential because we as a Union, we are fighting for not what we want, but what our members are asking for us to fight for.

And sometimes, the company is not adhering to our requests. As a collective, we will come together and strike in order to achieve what we want. Like last two pay talks, we had to go on strike, and we achieved 10% pay rise.

Collective lobbying is rather more impressive than individual lobbying. So for an example I could give, there was a driver who was transferred to this depot, and he noticed that the Boxing Day bonus was significantly lower than what he was receiving at the depot that he transferred from. So he notified the Union, and then the Union went about it by thoroughly investigating it.

And when the Union found out that it was factual, then because we were also in pay talks at that moment, we as a Union incorporated within the pay talks. The company agreed that they did fail this depot in that aspect, so they decided to not only harmonise this depot with the other depot, but also to backdate each and every driver who were affected by this. And that’s the example that I can give.