peace beyond all of you
I joined the transport and general
Workers Union
on Christmas Eve 1973.
and I remain a fully paid up member
until this day which makes me a union
man
I joined upon leaving school
the miracle was I found our Union office
open on Christmas Eve at 10 minutes to
six but that's another matter
because I went to work in the Michelin
Tire Factory in Dundee in Scotland where
I was born
and I have remained a member of this
Union
for one basic reasons and that basic
reason is this
if the workers are not United
if the workers are divided
they will be weak and they will fall
united we stand
divided we fall
so when I learned as the owner of a very
beautiful open drop bus myself
but the company
but simply refused all efforts that
negotiation
and the Acres
and that the workers had no alternative
but to withdraw their labor to highlight
their concerns about their conditions of
service I had no choice
I had to be here with you on this picket
line
we live in a world
will the rich get richer and the poor
have to struggle of a harder just to
keep up
over the last years five years
of conservative liberal Democrat
government
the rich
have doubled their wealth double their
next assets
while those who have to work for a
living and who depend on the wages
depend on their salaries to live
have been cheated at every turn
they say that it's because of the need
for austerity
they say there's an economic crisis
they say that we're all in this together
well when the millionaires are getting
tax cuts and the workers are getting
wage cuts when the millionaires are
doubling their assets
and the workers are finding an Ever more
difficult to put food on their table
we're definitely not all in this
together
did you know this
the reality is that our country is a
rich country
it's a rich country
it's just that the money is used wrongly
we've got no money to keep our old age
pensioners warm in the winter time
but we've always got money to go around
the world setting fire to other people's
countries with war and Invasion and
occupation we've got money from nuclear
weapons but we don't have money to pay
the bus drivers and the public sector
workers whose wages have been frozen
throughout these five years and both of
the main parties intend to continue to
freeze them
so I'm here with my friends with my wife
to stand with you on this picket line
if we need to do it again and again and
again we'll still be here
to the employer first boss
you would have no business if it were
not for these men
standing around me now
you would have no prophets you'd have
nothing to live your lives of luxury on
the workers are the people who create
everything everything around you was
made by a worker every service you
receive or your family received today is
given by a worker Henry Ford the great
motor magnate once told the United
automated Workers Union in America I
could replace all of you with robots and
the worker said that there'd be nobody
to buy your cars the workers and their
wages are what makes the economy work
and so it's time to stand up for
fairness and Justice that's all that
unite are doing the newspapers including
I may say the telegraph in Argus whose
photographer we welcome today
will say that somehow you've
inconvenienced the public well of course
there's inconvenience when there's a
strike because the people depend on you
depend on your work
but that inconvenience has been caused
by the intransigence of the employer the
refusal to negotiate properly and the
refusal to reach an agreement even with
the involvement of acas so any
inconvenience is the fault of first bus
and not the bus drivers who make the
world
so I wish you every success but if first
we don't succeed we'll try try again
because we're standing up for dignity
for
justice and that's why I'm here with you
now and always
thank you