Thousands of passengers left waiting for bus strikes to arrive
Following Monday night’s collapse of talks between unions and management on how to knock €12m off the staff pay bill, the board of the bus company will gather once again this morning to look at its options, including potentially deciding a date for the implementation of a series of controversial cuts.
As Siptu said in the aftermath of the talks collapse, strike action is “unavoidable”.
The company is losing €50,000 per day while savings are not implemented.
It lost €9m last year and alongside €350,000 in lost fares it will be deducted €125,000 in State funding for every day of strike by its workers.
This is a company that is already on course to be insolvent in a matter of weeks.
Furthermore, when the dust settles — and if the company is still in business — how much damage will have been done reputationally by such a protracted and acrimonious dispute with its own staff?
The numbers choosing to forsake Bus Éireann’s Expressway services on the popular routes for the often more frequent and quicker private bus carriers will only grow.
There had been a level of optimism that a dispute which has raged on since last September could be coming closer to a resolution.
The sides had gone into talks at the Workplace Relations Commission on March 6 and enough common ground was evidently found to keep them all at the table for the best part of a week — few looking in from the outside would have expected nearly enough detente to sustain such a long engagement.
But then the nub of the whole dispute raised its head once again. Cuts to drivers’ incomes are the sizeable roadblock that are always going to have to be overcome.
In a statement made minutes after the WRC talks “concluded without agreement”, the company said there was a refusal to accept any reduction of earnings, “including unnecessary overtime earnings”.
The overtime bill is at €13m. The unions said they will never accept such cuts as a pre-condition of entering a process to decide on efficiencies.
It is understood that up to €500,000 would be saved every year through cuts to “ad-hoc” overtime while a further €870,000 could be saved from the bill for roster scheduled overtime. But those go nowhere near the €12m the company is looking for from its paybill.
In terms of efficiencies, Dermot O’Leary, general secretary of the National Bus and Rail Union, said it is “bizarre” that the company told his team that it would take a month for it to produce new rosters to support the efficiency agenda even though the dispute has been going on for seven months.
He said if a driver is expected to buy into spending more time behind the wheel to save the company, it was reasonable to expect he would want to see his roster first.
Whatever date is announced by the company for the introduction of any unagreed cutbacks, will also be the day when indefinite strike begins. And that action will not just have an impact on all Bus Éireann services.
Fellow union members in Dublin Bus and Irish Rail will not cross the picket lines out of solidarity for their CIÉ colleagues. The shutdown of transport services will be widespread.
The shutdown of transport services will be widespread.
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