Further snap bus and rail strikes signalled for next week

Bus Éireann workers have vowed to hit train, Dublin Bus and Dart services with further unannounced wildcat strikes again next week disrupting the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of commuters each day.

Just hours before yesterday morning’s chaos, Dermot O’Leary of the National Bus and Rail Union issued a statement warning that “the palpable anger among Bus Éireann workers is making it extremely difficult for this trade union to hold the line with regards to preventing contagion across the entire public transport sector”.

The unofficial pickets were mounted at 4am and remained in place for a number of hours before Dublin Bus and Irish Rail services finally began to roll again in mid-morning.

By then, an estimated 120,000 Dublin Bus and 40,000 Irish Rail passengers had been affected. A further 110,000 Bus Éireann commuters are being impacted every day.

Siptu has also confirmed it is to ballot school bus drivers for strikes over “the threat to their jobs resulting from the wider crisis in the company”.

The NBRU and Siptu issued statements saying they did not “condone” the unofficial action but they understood the “frustrations” of Bus Éireann workers.

The NBRU said the action at stations shared by Bus Éireann and the other CIÉ companies did not have its official sanction.

“All workers at both companies that are members of the NBRU should be at work as normal today,” said the union’s general secretary Dermot O’Leary.

John Houlihane, an NBRU member who has been a bus driver at Cork’s Capwell depot for 38 years, said the wildcat action was borne out of frustration at grassroots level amongst workers on the picket line.

“We’ve been on the picket line for the last seven days — nothing has happened. The minister hasn’t gotten involved, the WRC isn’t talking to us, the company aren’t speaking to us.

“So eventually, frustration at that situation means people are going to break and take action on their own,” he said.

“Somebody else has to get involved, and if the minister isn’t prepared to facilitate somebody doing that for us, we’re going to be here again next week, and we’re going to hit the trains, and Dublin Bus, and the Dart between now and next week.”

Siptu called on Transport Minister Shane Ross and other stakeholders “to take their responsibility and engage in discussions to protect the future of vital public transport services and those who provide them”.

However, as well as saying the legality of yesterday’s wildcat strikes was “questionable”, the minister said it was “absolutely vital” that he not intervene in the Bus Éireann dispute.

“I’m not going to be intimidated by anybody, any wildcat strikes. We are certainly not going to respond to it,” he told RTÉ radio.

“We are going to make sure the unions and management go into the Workplace Relations Commission, go to the Labour Court and they solve it there.

“For me to intervene would be to undermine the institutions of the State.”

Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar, a former transport minister, said that in previous bus disputes, a facilitator had been appointed to be a go-between for the sides, but that required the strike to end.

The question remains as to whether Bus Éireann workers would be willing to come off the pickets in advance of any talks.

Sources have indicated that the anger is such that they may insist they remain on strike until the cost-saving dispute is fully resolved.

Mr Varadkar also said that while Bus Éireann is an important company “it’s not essential in that most of what it does could be replaced by private contractors”.

“I think the actions today demonstrate exactly why it is important that we have private provision in transport,” he said.

“That is how people got around today.”