While I was totally aware of the fact that we had a United Kingdom (UK) sister union working on the same school bus and transit workers campaign as us in the States, I never realized how huge the Transport & General Workers Union (known as the T&G in the UK) was. Evidently, our sister union is merging with another union to form the largest trade union in the UK, with over two million members .

The drivers and union leaders visiting from the UK last week at the Jacksonville Workers’ Congress made it clear: Their fight is our fight, our fight is their fight.

In an effort to learn more about the T&G’s School Bus and Transit Workers in the UK , I poked around at their website and read more of the FirstGroup campaign history, here is what I found out.

FirstGroup, which is headquartered in the UK , is the parent company of First Student and First Transit here in the United States. Our coworkers in the UK are all proud members of the Transport and General Workers Union. The T&G is currently in the process of merging with the Amicus union to form a new labor union to be called Unite , the Union – which will be one of the largest trade unions in all of Europe. This process will be completed by November 2008.

When FirstGroup acquired Bruce Transportation and Ryder Public Transportation in 1999, it became the second largest school bus and transit operator in the United States. Since then, the T&G members at FirstGroup in the United Kingdom have worked in close partnership with the Teamsters to make sure that we are offered the same opportunity to join a union. In addition, our coworkers continue to assist in seeing that we get the same benefits of having a union in place as they do in the UK .

To learn more about our coworkers in England and their relationship with the Teamsters, please click here. The link will take you to the page called “Documents You Need.” Once there, scroll until you see the PDF titled, “Did You Know?”

Anyone who was in Jacksonville heard Ian McDonald, Lew May and Taj Salam – our UK counterparts – speak. We heard that they are generally at least 90% unionized at their depots (yards), and that we can … & will do the same here.