UNTIL three months ago, I was a bus driver with First York. I was paid £5.75 an hour to undertake demanding, pressured work that required considerable skill and was occasionally personally dangerous.

Many of the drivers have to work up to the legal limit of permitted hours in order to take home a living wage.

First does not pay overtime rates - all extra hours are paid at the driver's basic rate. Nor does First pay a driver when he or she is taking the compulsory rest break during a shift.

I firmly believe that York bus drivers thoroughly deserve to be paid £8 an hour ("Pay strike on buses 'now looks inevitable'", July 7), only marginally more than some supermarkets pay their checkout staff.

First management should realise that the only way to stem the ceaseless haemorrhage of drivers is to pay them a proper rate for undertaking a very difficult job.

Anthony Gaynor,

Nunthorpe Avenue,

York.

Updated: 10:21 Wednesday, July 09, 2003