Bus workers were right to strike

Amongst the predictable and hackneyed verbiage that gets bandied about every time some particular sector of workers downs tools and goes about inconveniencing the public in their legitimate attempts to avoid a diminution of pay and conditions is talk about “greed” and God help us, “holding the public to ransom” from the usual parties.

Well, the Irish populace has certainly experienced, full-on, what it feels like to be really held to ransom in the last half decade but from a cabal of people significantly more imposing than bus drivers.

It’s useful for critics of industrial action to ponder an uncomfortable conundrum; why would workers withdraw their labour and suffer the resultant instant financial loss for something trivial? Strike action is never undertaken lightly and is always a matter of last resort.

In the specific case of bus divers, they are providing a vital social service and one of huge responsibility. For that they deserve to be decently remunerated. It’s worth noting that Dublin Bus’ notoriously top-heavy management — and only when the strike was in the offing — agreed to cuts of three- to five-per cent in their salaries. A slight shaving of a six digit sum which was over-inflated in the first place.

No doubt the chestnut that “we” are paying “their” wages came up at some stage in what passes for discourse around these issues. Well, to the best of my knowledge all public sector workers pay PAYE which goes in to the same national pot so it can hardly be a case of one group of workers subsidising another.

In the light of what the majority of us have endured in the recent “austerity” years it is heartening to see that at least some people still have the stomach to resist cuts to their wages whilst, in the background, a layer of people such as Bank CEO’s, RTÉ “stars” and Government figures continue to enjoy immunity. We have spent the years since 2008 complaining as to why workers in this country don’t stand up and be counted and then when one sector finally does …

JD Mangan

Stillorgan

Co Dublin