Durham, Stock Transportation Workers Present Testimony to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights
Kim Wrightson has always believed that if you are going to improve your lot in life, you do it through hard work and dedication – no one in this world is going to hand anything to you.
That’s why Wrightson, a bus driver at Durham School Services in Elgin, Illinois, and her fellow workers decided to take control of their own future by organizing with the Teamsters Union earlier this year. When management got wind of the group’s intention to organize, it launched an aggressive anti-union campaign. Wrightson and her co-workers had the whole playbook thrown at them leading up to the election – from threats and intimidation to outright lies about the union, the company held nothing back.
"We wanted to organize because of a number of problems in the workplace but Durham didn’t want to give up their power and fought us," Wrightson said. "They didn’t want to just let us make up our own minds about organizing but instead they threatened us, intimidated us and forced us to listen to their company propaganda almost daily."
Durham School Services is a subsidiary of National Express (NEX), a UK-based transportation company that also owns Stock Transportation, a school bus service in Canada.
Roy Willis works for Stock Transportation in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and experienced similar behavior from management when he and his co-workers began their campaign to join the Teamsters in 2008.
"There were some real problems with working conditions, pay and benefits and human rights policies at our yard," Willis recalls. "My fellow workers and I felt we needed to take action to improve the situation by joining the Teamsters. Management immediately began casting the union as the bad guy – they claimed we would lose our benefits and have to pay dues while the union made promises they couldn’t keep."
Unfortunately, Willis and Wrightson’s experiences are not unique. The scales have long been tipped in management’s favor on labor issues.
A recent study from American Rights at Work and the Economic Policy Institute, No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing, found companies are ramping up their anti-union activities due to current labor law being an ineffective deterrent in curbing this behavior.
Willis and Wrightson were two of the workers that testified in front of representatives from the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. last week during their visit to the states.
The workers are part of the Drive Up Standards campaign – a joint initiative between the Transport and General Workers Union of Unite the Union in the United Kingdom and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the United States and Canada. Drive Up Standard’s mission is to ensure that employees of multinational transport companies are treated with respect and dignity in regard to their human rights. That process begins, in many ways, by focusing on a company’s track record of respecting workers’ rights, including the right to organize without interference from management.
When companies like NEX’s subsidiaries stand in the way of a worker’s desire to organize, they violate that worker’s human rights. The Joint Committee on Human Rights agreed to sit down and listen to Willis and Wrightson’s experiences. Following their testimony, the committee members expressed their support.
"It’s disturbing that a number of British companies are behaving differently toward their workers than they do in England," said Lord Alfred Dubs, a member of the House of Lords and former Chair of the Labour Party in Lords.
As part of their mission, the Joint Committee on Human Rights considers human rights issues in the United Kingdom including the manner in which British businesses’ actions can affect those rights positively and negatively at home and overseas.
"Clearly there is an issue here," said Andrew Dismore, committee chair and Member of Parliament in the House of Commons.
"As trade unionists we should be talking to National Express to ask why they are acting this way," said MP John Austin.
Earlier this year, Willis did just that. The school bus driver traveled to London to attend the NEX shareholder meeting and represent all North American workers at the company’s subsidiaries.
Willis addressed the board on May 6, and spoke passionately about the violations of human rights at Stock Transportation and Durham.
"We wanted to let the parent company know how workers were being treated by the management here in North America," Willis said. "We hoped things could change from the top down, and called on the company to respect workers rights – human rights – at its North American subsidiaries."
At the meeting, Richard Bowker, CEO of NEX, committed to investigating the concerns raised by Willis.
"It’s my hope that between Bowker’s commitment to investigate these violations and the positive feedback we received from the Members of Parliament on the Joint Committee for Human Rights, National Express will take the necessary steps to stop its North American subsidiaries from violating the human rights of their workers," Willis said.
Workers at First Student, the American subsidiary of another British transportation company FirstGroup, also encountered violations of their rights when they began to organize with the Teamsters two-and-a-half years ago.
It was only after bringing these issues to the attention of the parent company, FirstGroup, that First Student adopted a company-wide freedom of association policy which has helped to decrease anti-union behavior by the company. To date, more than 18,500 private school bus employees at First Student have now organized with the Teamsters.
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