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.