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MMC looks at Stagecoach
Page 20
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• Stagecoach Holdings is to be investigated by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission over its acquisition of Portsmouth Citybus last November.
Trade and Industry secretary Nicholas Ridley, acting on the recommendation of the Office of Fair Trading, believes the MMC needs to look at the implications of the takeover for bus competition in Portsmouth, Havant and the surrounding area.
The Citybus purchase, which followed Stagecoach's acquisition of its main competitor, Southdown, the previous August, gives Stagecoach an estimated 90% of Portsmouth and Havant's bus services.
Stagecoach is also running into union problems, with Labour MP Dennis Skinner accusing the company of trying to destroy union participation in East Midlands Motor Services.
The company, which has over 700 National Union of Railwaymen members, was bought by Stagecoach last April, since when industrial relations have been troubled. The NUR says it enjoyed good employee-management relations when owned by the National Bus Company and then by a previous management buy-out team. But Stagecoach's Brian Souter, joint managing director with Ann Gloag, says the "inability to make progress with the union at East Midlands is a reflection of the quality of the committee and the handling of the situation by officials". He says that the company has "excellent relations" with the trade unions at other subsidiaries, adding "we are very happy to work with them. But we're in the middle of a restructure at East Midlands which is having fairly serious commercial problems which need to be resolved quickly, and we can't stand still." Souter is attempting to impose new contracts and new pay levels on all East Midlands employees with effect from March: union members will ballot on whether to respond with industrial action in protest. An earlier ballot, which voted in favour of 24-hour stoppages, was disallowed by management for alleged irregularities.
Stagecoach barred the union at East Midlands just before Christmas, disbanding negotiating machinery, refusing time off for union activities, and withdrawing from payroll deductions of union dues.
Two key union officials were dismissed at the end of last year; an appeal is scheduled with the industrial tribunal in March.
NUR divisional officer Lawrence Cramer says Souter is using a "John Wayne style of management" to break up the East Midlands union organisation — one of the strongest in all the Stagecoach companies — to make it an example to other Stagecoach subsidiaries.
Neil Renilson, director of Stagecoach's Magicbus subsidiary, has been accused by the Transport & General Workers' Union of spying on a meeting held in Perth to inform Perth Panther employees of the benefits of union membership.