Bus strike shows ‘working week’ is outdated

On Tuesday evening both sides in the Dublin Bus dispute decided that they needed to sit down with the Labour Court.

Whilst it was welcome it was not before time. After all, the basis of the strike was a Labour Court recommendation which was already a compromise to an earlier company plan that was rejected by the unions.

That a strike would happen was well signalled. That it would start in the middle of a bank holiday weekend meant not as many people as on a normal weekday would be inconvenienced. On Tuesday it started to bite and the voice of reason, even if it is only short term, won.

The genesis of the strike appears to be relatively simple. Government has been cutting back on the subventions paid to Dublin Bus. Furthermore it informed Dublin Bus it would have to make €11m in cuts and these would have to come mainly from the payroll side. Now given that this is a CIE subsidiary it was odds-on it would escalate rapidly.

Indeed it has been suggested that having the unions from a CIE subsidiary lead from the front against government policy was welcomed because of that company’s ongoing worker history of objecting to any change and the relative weakness of their position on this one.

The weaknesses are several. One is that the initial company demand that core pay for a standard week, which is just shy of 40 hours, be reduced by 10% was thrown out by the Labour Court after the unions asked it to intervene.

The reductions were required only on premium pay which includes the equivalent of three times standard pay for a bank holiday.

On Tuesday, it became known that 75% of the workers in Dublin Bus do not want to work overtime — so only 25% were really affected. To top it all we were informed on the Joe Duffy Show by one of the strikers that the company wanted to reduce workers’ holiday entitlement. It would appear that after a certain number of years, a Dublin Bus employee gets 34 days annual leave.

The views of the callers to Joe Duffy were mixed. While most, if not all, were unhappy at the disruption to people’s lives, many did otherwise support the striking workers. Unfortunately, it did not appear that this support was specifically for the workers’ own case but was rather against government policy of taking and then again taking from those who can least afford to pay.

Indeed one 75-year-old lady spoke of having voted Fine Gael all of her life but never again. Whilst it wasn’t yet evident on various vox pops, it is hard not to expect that pensioners on bus passes would not be thrilled to hear the unions’ main suggestion was a levy on those having "free bus passes".

This strike surely begs a lot of questions. For instance, why do we cling to the concept of a working week from Monday to Friday? We live in a 24/7 world and very many people working in that world work in businesses and services that operate on a 24/7 basis. Every day is a working day.

Clearly people should be compensated for working overtime but why should there be any premium pay for someone rostered to work on any day of the week if it’s not specifically overtime?

This Monday to Friday working week concept means our hospitals do not fully function over weekends or holidays. Our schools and colleges are generally closed or are not fully utilised over weekends.

These are issues that will raise their heads again.

Dublin Bus is in serious financial difficulty and any assurance to its workers that these overtime pay restrictions will be lifted after X period of time will make it a hostage to fortune.

It’s hard to see any early way out of its financial difficulties that do not include more subvention which is just not there or higher fares which would exacerbate diminishing returns.