But a new strategy, spearheaded by Unite’s Stagecoach shop stewards and national officer Bobby Morton, has driven through the company’s divide and rule tactics, leaving them crumpled in the dust. The strategy, implemented during Sharon Graham’s first 100 days as Unite general secretary, has implications for organising to win at national companies across the economy. It is an example of Sharon Graham’s reconfiguration of the union to increase industrial power and propel positive change at the workplace. Sharon Graham said: “Unite now does exactly what it says on the trade union tin: fight to defend our members’ jobs, pay and conditions. The inflation busting pay rises at Stagecoach shows this approach is paying dividends for Unite members.” So how did Stagecoach go from telling staff at all its operational companies that they would have to shoulder a pay freeze at the beginning of this year, to implementing pay deals that include rises of 7.5 per cent, 6.5 per cent and even 10.5 per cent? The answer is simple – Unite. “The stewards were keen to come up with a national strategy for Stagecoach,” said Unite national officer, Bobby Morton. “However, you have to be very careful because we don’t have national bargaining and if we held a national ballot, the union would end up in court, lose the case and could be on the hook for a couple of million pounds,” he explained. “But the fact is that you can’t beat big groups like Stagecoach on individual ballots. We decided that the shop stewards from each operational company would put the same pay claim in at the same time and when they were rejected, which they all were, everyone would ballot for industrial action at the same time.” It was clear that Stagecoach as a whole could well afford to give its drivers a decent pay rise. Notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic, its latest accounts reveal that the group made a profit of £58.4m in 2020 and that it has £875m of available liquidity.