I don’t think I have ever written before about a British strike directly related to the climate emergency. But that’s exactly what began late last week in north London, with a zeitgeisty connection to Andy Burnham’s fixation on buses: picket lines outside depots and massed walkouts, while the temperatures in the relevant parts of the capital and its suburbs hovered at about 34C (93F). Last Friday, more than 1,500 drivers employed by the transport giant Arriva began a planned run of 26 stoppages through to October, affecting bus routes spread between London and Essex.
Everything is being led by the union Unite, whose recent grievances include alleged company union-busting and assaults by the public on staff. But the fundamental basis of the dispute is at the heart of the national condition: the near-impossibility for millions of people of working through another insanely hot summer. Most of Arriva North London’s buses, says Unite, have old-fashioned air cooling systems rather than air conditioning, which means that onboard temperatures have come down by only two or three degrees during this year’s five heatwaves.
On other such vehicles, it insists, the air-con is broken. The cabs where drivers sit are essentially compact greenhouses, and can easily reach 40C or higher. And there is another grim twist: union members complain of a shortage of toilets on too many routes, meaning they refrain from drinking water.
Unite has been warning about all this since the phases of intense heat that began back in May; its members, the union says, have experienced “heat exhaustion, heatstroke and dehydration”. Arriva’s last financial figures showed a pre-tax profit of £133m. The company insists that it has “introduced short-term measures to protect drivers”, and is now also spending money on “longer-term fixes, including cab air-conditioning upgrades and our ongoing investment in new fleet”.
But the root of its current problems seem clear. There is a longstanding failure, which runs across the UK’s public and private sectors – and also transcends national boundaries – to understand the mounting everyday effects of global heating, and to engage in what so many 21st-century companies and institutions remain so bad at: protective investment, with both eyes fixed not just on the searing inevitabilities of the future, but realities that are already here. Arriva places tight restrictions on its drivers talking to the media, so Unite pointed me instead to Mo, who has worked for another London bus operator for over 15 years, and had come to a picket line to show the strikers his support.
That’s what it’s like.” What, I wondered, had happened when these problems were raised with management? If you say, ‘I’ve got a hot cab, I want to come out,’ they’re like, ‘Well, we’re going to lose mileage; we’re going to get penalised by TfL [Transport for London].’ I know the mayor’s put the message out” – in June, Sadiq Khan said he was committed to improving working conditions for drivers – “but the company says, ‘He doesn’t employ you. We do.’” There are no end of similarly unsettling reports from other occupations.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
