Transport strike: Time to make concessions

It has been apparent for some time that a transport strike is inevitable. Bus Éireann is on the cusp of bankruptcy. 

The company lost €9.4m last year and has warned that losses in the first two months of this year were 41% higher than in the same period a year ago. Against this background, the company must change or die. The only valid question focuses on the scale of that change.

That the company has, after months of shadow boxing, decided to introduce cost cuts without union agreement provoked today’s strike. Unions have warned that it may be an all-out, indefinite dispute across the public transport sector.

Even the most ardent advocate of state subsidies for services that support a public good would recognise that the current situation cannot continue. Therefore, the debate moves to the size of the state subsidy given to the organisation — is it appropriate?

Is it working? Are the services it supports essential or expendable? Are the work practices it supports defensible? Each side will have different answers to those questions but one thing that does seem fair to say is that even taxpayers deeply committed to state supports for social services will baulk at the idea of those subsidies helping to sustain work arrangements that seem unimaginable in their own world.

It is essential to protect good quality jobs, to ensure that they are not usurped by minimum-everything jobs. Concessions will have to be made to achieve that worthy objective.