Bus Strke(!)

El_Presidente

Thought I would bring this up...

Is anyone else out there as pi$$ed off as me about this whole thing?

juNkie

Pain in the fukin hole awrigh, fukin leechin bus drivers, kunts.

Shiminay

Tis a right royal pain in the bum.

I gotta walk for a half hour to meet someone from work in order to have any hope of getting ni, but, we were an hour in traffic this morning (on a trip that takes 20 - 25 mins). Fluffed up!

I wouldn't mind, but the bus drivers are earning over £22K a year on average! I'm not against them looking for more money, it's not the greatest job in the world, but they have the city by the short and curlies and they know it.

There's talk of extending till the weekend and they're hoping to cause a lot of grief for the Rugby (hint - Rugby players are BIG. Rugby fans are rugby players. Do the sums).

We'll have to wait and see what happens.

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
http://homepage.eircom.net/~davitt

Lucutus

I'm so glad I got my own transport before the first strikes!

tis a pi$$er tho

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Lucutus of Borg

Draco

They are a bunch of self-serving BA$TARDS! And with Irish Rail on strike as well, Dublin is *crippled* I'm looking at staying over at friends houses until this blows over. While they are intitled to pay rises, 20% is fu<king ridiculus. They know it's a $hite job when they apply. And if they get 20%, it will spark another round of "if they got it, we want it" type strikes. They should be dragged out and have some sense beaten into them. Our "Celtic Tiger" economy will not take the strain of strikes like this and it'll be back to the bad old days. Dublin is hard enough to get around as it is with out this bull$hit going on as well.

DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE!

Dr-(I'm not angry...I'm furious!)-aco

El_Presidente

Yeah, its not like they have it all that bad. Your average trucker earns about as much.

They complain that they start on a pay of £190 but this is only the starting wage. They can earn 22 grand a year eventually.

If the government does crack (which I doubt) then the whole national pay agreement goes out the window. Everyone will demand more money, the government gives in and pays up. Inflation goes up and the economic BUBBLE bursts.

All thanks to those damn bus drivers.

hey, it could happen!

/me digs in for a long strike.

Gamblor

I'm waiting for the army to come to the rescue again !!!! but i'm sick of it .. because of them and Irish rail ... my date looks like it won't happen on friday !!!!

***** not happy **** still single *****

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***** Feel my Evil Neon Claws *****

Gerry

They should all be sacked with no severance pay, and docile leper monkeys recruited instead. The *******s!!!! or we could have a load of executions of bus drivers, similar those in 1916. Except this time it wont get any sympathy from the public, minus maybe the socialist workers party who might use the oppurtunity to stage a dry run of a coup - detat. The executions would start with one driver at the top of the pay ladder and proceed downwards, with twice the number being executed each time until the remaining drivers go back to work. This might frighten the rest of the public sector out of demanding ridicoulous pay rises also. Its just a thought

Excelsior

They have a really bad time of it. 77% of them earn 22,740 a year ON AVERAGE. that means they can make that sort of money, but only if they live in buses. 190 a week is not enough for a job with so much stress and responsibility. still, 20% is massive, and dublin bus CANT nearly afford that wage bill increase, (9.5 million a year) and the bus drivers, educated, enlightened folk that they are, refuse wholeheartedly to any training or efficiency plans. basically they want to be paid extra while still being able to treat ppl like crap all the time and be obnoxious ********s who dont have a clue about the very fundamentals of customer service. thats why their meeting a few nights ago lasted 7 minutes, they wont talk about efficiency systems.
the whole system in cie is at fault. may privatisation come quickly so we dont have to pay for their losses, so that money can be invested in new hardware, trains, buses etc... and so the idiots in management who think you can have a motivated workforce on 190 pound a week and the idiots we meet every day on buses, or behind the counter in the train station can start looking for new jobs.
and by the way, the army should be called in now.
and those rail guys are soooo out of line.
and john o donaghue's new "refugee" laws are sickening

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We are superfriends
Super friends are we

Hecate

catch 22 excelsior.

privitisation would mean unprofitable routes would be closed down, just look at what happenend in Britain because of Thatcher's '5 year plans'.

Public transport by its very nature is an unprofitable business, its one of the few civil services that HAS to be subsidised by the govt.

Oh yes, and the bus drivers are w ankers for doing this, rail and bus eireann are even bigger w ankers for following them.

Canaboid

I used to work in the bank a few years ago. My salary was £10,500 a year. Did I go on strike and inconvience everyone ? No, I left, went BACK to college and studied networking and got myself a decent job.
The Bus drivers signed a contract when they started, stating their salary. They knew the risks when they drafted the caper.
Fu(k them all the useless unskilled w4nk3rs. If they want to get well paid let them learn to do something that pays well.

Draco

I heard the plan for privatisation is that the unprofitable routes will be subsidised anyway. The Govt. is very aware that a private company is there for profit not for the public good.

Draco

Shiminay

At least LUAS will be run by a private company - CIE aren't getting a look ni! Godd stuff!

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
http://homepage.eircom.net/~davitt

WhiteWashMan

anyone who knows me will know i used to be a shop stewerd for SIPTU.

i will never ever ever work in a unionised place of work again.
unions are full of dicheads who want to spend more time moaning about their conditions than working towards fixing them.

best thing that happened in britain was maggie thatcher under(mine)ing (pun intended)
the coal miners.
now that was brilliant politics at work. all the coalminers wanted to do was moan about working conditions. i mean seriously, you work down a shaggin hole ffs!

oh, and i walk to work, but i still hate buses and bus drivers. goto london and get the subway. one every 2 minutes and its fun.

Smurfy

They have a though job, crap hours and lots of abuse so in all fairness to them they deserve the money. its not their problem if the money isnt there to give them, it will be as soon as we all realise how much they are needed!

Good luck to them i say!....but thats me.

adieu adieu.....remember me!

madyoke

well emm im a bus driver meself now and ehh im quite confused ... you lot are spokin in awflury complexitative lanmuage nad Oi cannot for the life of me undermand a merd yar talking

im not a mlave now, and i curtainaly didmt go to skool fore 5 full year of me life to werk for thises kind of terrimible money

i could quit now and bemomo a law men now if i manted, but neigh for the hour ill mlet her sit at ease and wait

Paladin

Originally posted by Smurfy:
They have a though job, crap hours and lots of abuse so in all fairness to them they deserve the money. its not their problem if the money isnt there to give them, it will be as soon as we all realise how much they are needed!

I dont really know where to begin to say whats wrong with that statement.
I do actually. Its the spelling.
"though" ? Either its bad grammer or bad spelling. Ill shoot for spelling. Its "tough"

Now if the money isnt there for "THEM" its not "THEIR" problem. Ah. Hmmm. Then uuh who exactly has the problem then?

That kind of open stupidness of statement aside, they are doing the ****** plain and simple. If they really deserved pay increases thay should have at least had PROPER negotiations. Just having a strike is being an as$hole. It is illegal. The strike is unauthorised. They should be waited out until they have to go back to work to earn money for themselves again.

I know its all fine and well to say that, and meanwhile hundreds, thousands of ppl even, will be screwed. Its the principle that has to be upheld here. As said previously, there could be a strike by some other sector looking for money if the bus drivers get theirs.
Whether they deserve the money or not has become much less of an issue as far as Im concerned, after they went and broke the law.
You just cant screw the average Joe on the street just because you cant be reasonable in your demand for pay.

Paladin

And I actually rekon "though" was a typo but it adds so much more substance to my reply and discrediting of the statement

Blitzkrieger

I had a ball! Town was virtually deserted! Normally I try to avoid shopping until there is more than 3 holes in all my clothing but today was brilliant! Not one screaming kid, no huge crowds of people walking at a snails pace and no buses to cross in front of and nearly get knocked down by some idiot overtaking it!

Oddly enough there was plenty of parking too

Lump

I think the Idea about letting outside companies offer a bus service is a good one. I'm from Kilkwenny and I know that JJ Kavanagh buses would be first in there. They are a deadly bus company, not pusking Kilkenny business (I'm not related to them). But besides that any bus company could do it, CIE and Dublin buse have controlled the transport in Dublin for long enough. Anyway once the buses and trains are back in time for the LAN I don't care.

John

Manach

In Cork, the trains were cancelled without notice thanks to the wildcat action, I didn't know a thing about it till I turned up the station. This morning had to pay for a taxi, from Mallow to work, expensive. Therefore my sympathies for the strikers has gone into negative values.

Wyverne

there all tossers if ya asks me, i mean REALLY who wouldn't want to work in a crap job getting the **** beaten out of ya everyday and to be getting paid less than a bloody whore,

/me thinks EVERYONE!!!!

MUHHAHAHAHAHAHA

Von

WWman, the miners strike was about pit closures not working conditions. Since the strikes were in local communities where police would be on friendly terms with miners, the strikes were peaceful. Thatcher's solution was to bus police from London and elsewhere into mining towns to beat up miners and create confrontations then let the tory press depict the miners as a bunch of thugs so public sympathy and support would be eroded.

Von

Striking without warning was just about the stupidest thing they could have done. I lost a day from my holidays cos of Bus Eireann so I was stuck in the house in daytime tv hell. So I'm going to write an over the top letter DEMANDING compensation. Koopa help me do it.

Shiminay

I just read on another BB I frequent, that in Madrid a similar situation happened a few years back. What the drivers did was drive the busses, but refused to collect any fares! That way, the bus company lost way more money as there was no income and diesel still had to be paid for!

That's the best solution. the only ppl it hurts are the company.

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
http://homepage.eircom.net/~davitt

LoLth

hmmmm, a bit of maths...

College 4 years, lots of exams, learn ****.
Job= 12k starting (not bad), maybe 15-18k after 1-2 yrs. 20k+if you're lucky.

Sound about right?

Learn to drive Bus:
how long? 6 months? 8 months? Exam.
10k per year, goes up to 22k after time.
Overtime, shift allowance, double, and in some cases quad pay on certain holidays.

yes the job has stress, which they obviously take out on the customers by the way - if one more smug git 'forgets' to give me a change ticket (which is an illegal thing to do by the way) I'll...I'll.. well there's not much you can do is there? you'll get kicked off the bus if you shout and rant). All jobs have stress (well, nearly all).

**** 'em. they want a pay rise, let them got for a 5% or 6%. 20%? exactly what sort of extra services will the provide/improve? No more being gits? They should be doing that already shouldn't they?

I agree they should get a pay rise, but a SMALL one! Greedy ****ers.

the celtic tiger

It personally doesn't bother me. Since the bus/train strike started my ma's been giving me a lift to college in the morning. Seeing as it's only ten minutes down the road I'm getting a minimum of 30 minutes extra in bed every morning. I say....ASK FOR A 300% PAY INCREASE!!!!!!!!!

bye

tct

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And with that I stand down as leader of this ancient and very sacred society. I just hope you will treat your new leader with as much love and respect as you have shown me. I bid thee farewell.
thank you

Excelsior

Scene: Palatial residence somewhere in the Bahamas.

NRBU Head-honcho:
"Ahh, Isgleasias, it seems the tide of public opinion is swelling. They have decided we don't deserve the gratitude and appreciation we feel is owed. years of shoddy, over-priced service, treating customer service as if it were a leper child to be avoided... we inspired them to be a service economy. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that we are solely responsible for the Celtic Tiger. Every sector of it, we played a part, the software engineers waited at bus stops for us during college years, the telemarketers learnt vital linguistic skills argueing with us, the drugs industry regards us as their private taxi company, the health industry has been living it large off the back of our carcinogenic output in Dublin, and lawyers have enjoyed easy cases from the accidents we indirectly cause with our inconsiderate driving. And now, all we ask for is another 20% without efficiency talks or extra training, I mean I heard about one guy who knew computery stuff getting paid £621 million for a job, and they call us tossers and wan.kers. Bono and that old writer guy, Joiysce, was it, had it right when they said Dubliners were begrudging fe<kers! What shall I and my down-trodden bus drivers do trusted advisor, Isgleasias?"

Trusted Advisor Isgleasias:
"The rebels are building a network. Break out the tear gas, and call in the horse back patrols. Crush theeeeeem!
Oh, yes, and when we do go back to work, let us be triply rude and obnoxious to the ingrates! MU-HU-HA-HA!"

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We are superfriends
Super friends are we

Smurfy

I still feel that they deserve the money!And Paladin....fu<k u. that is my opinion, can't you just give yours without the hostility you gimp.

you are a sad ******* if you go around correcting peoples spelling mistakes trying always to be smart and cheeky.

cop on

smurf

Frances Farmer

Well lad's, the handbags are flyin'

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FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT.

Hobbes

Hail to the bus driver, bus driver, bus driver

[all together now!]

Hail to the bus driver bus driver man....

22K is not a lot. I think we should find the local CIE Quake player and get them to post thier opinion on the whole thing.

Unions are a two edged sword. I've worked in places where without a Union people would be working 50 hour weeks for 100 quid and fired on a seconds notice, and I've been in other places where the union have threatened to strike if the tea isn't on time (well not that bad but just as worse, just can't say what or who for professional reasons).

Paladin

Originally posted by Smurfy:
I still feel that they deserve the money!And Paladin....fu<k u. that is my opinion, can't you just give yours without the hostility you gimp.

you are a sad ******* if you go around correcting peoples spelling mistakes trying always to be smart and cheeky.

cop on

smurf

On the other hand that isnt exactly dignified now is it?

And without the hostility? You mean like this reply?


Did you read this one?

Originally posted by Paladin:
And I actually rekon "though" was a typo but it adds so much more substance to my reply and discrediting of the statement

Look smurf, I wasnt going for any personal insult here. I just felt your reasons were wrong. An "opinion".
And Im not going to be drawn into any sort of "petty" insults on the boards. I apologise for calling part of your statement stupid. That doesnt mean I think its right. Its still my opinion that the whole affair was gone about completely incorrectly. I actually wouldnt begrudge them a reasonable payrise if they went about it the right was, but like I said, the deserving of the money became less important to me when they wen completely out of line with this strike.

P.S. Always trying to be smart and cheeky? In future Ill be sarcastic and cynical so Thats so much more likeable and condescending <

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note cheekiness and smartness

[This message has been edited by Paladin (edited 30-03-2000).]

Hecate

look on the bright side, this bus strike has given us new experiences:

its the best exercise I've had in years.

you have traffic jams, but has anyone ever seen a bicycle jam?. Well I did, this morning, Dublin is turning into Shanghai.

Smurfy

keep it up,

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Frances Farmer

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FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT.

TwoShedsJackson

Well I walk into work and/or town every day, so I couldn't give a fiddler's fu<k how long the bus strike lasts. Get a car or start getting some exercise you miserable peons

Hecate

quiet, you

Smurfy

Just because other sectors of the workforce might strike out and look for pay increases, does not mean that bus drivers shouldn't strike. It is their right to strike and if anyone here reads the newspaper they will see that opinions favour more money for them. It is not their problem who else wants more money. I still say fair play to them and i reckon that they should wait untill they get enough money. It is my opinion so if you dont like it, relax and show me why they don't deserve it!




adieu adieu remember me!

Draco

You want more proof than the fact that they've CRIPPLED the city, 20% is completely ridiculous, especial since they will not change their working pratices. And if they did get 20%, then the other bus drivers in Cork, Limerick and Galway will want a pay rise as well, so they will go on strike. And since Train drivers have a related union (or is it the same?) they'll want a pay rise as well and go on strike. The government should do two things: wait the b@stards out and introduce competion.
I do agree that they have a right to a pay rise, but in the region of 5-10% and they do have a right to strike, but they should at least provide a skeleton service at rush hour.
I'm considering taking holidays if there is an all out strike as it is just too much hassle getting in and out of Dublin with out the buses running.

Dr-(String 'em up by the ears!)-aco

Excelsior

You're right draco. The striking union represents train and bus drivers

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It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

Shinji

Apparently only 70% of the drivers are back in work today. The other 30% have presumably decided that this whole sitting on their ar$es at home action appeals to them.

Whats the betting that we see more wildcat action over the weekend as bus drivers use this as an excuse not to bother their t1ts going into work?

Public opinion is very much against them. This isn't like the nurses strike, when opinions were divided. I've met a lot of people who are very angry about this, and are perfectly prepared to go through the hassle of having no public transport for as long as it takes, gritting their teeth and bearing it until the drivers back down and start to talk reasonably. 20% is completely unrealistic and unreasonable; their pay at the moment is easily high enough anyway, not to mention the fact that if they will make no concessions in the areas of training and productivity plans for the company, they should be fired, not given payrises.

BTW, Hobbes, 22k is more than a lot of well-qualified computer professionals earn. Seeing people look for 20% more than that (a wage hike which theoretically brings them to over 26k) for driving buses, being rude to passengers and providing a sloppy service, is just a bit too much to stomach.

Ja,
Rob

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[EED]Shinji -=*=- shinji@electricdeath.com
Site Editor, http://www.utsystem.co.uk

sutty

heres a web site, for people who want to complane about the bus strikes

http://www.geocities.com/dublinbusstrike

Smurfy

draco, 20% is too high but they have to ask for about that if they can be sure of 5-10%.

It is still not their problem who goes on strike, it is no reason for them not to.

o.k.!

smurf

Hecate

TwoShedsJackson

Hold up lads, the right to strike is part of working in a democracy, would you prefer a communist collective where strikes are illegal/punishable by prison etc??

Yes they are inconveniencing a lot of people, however consider this: they seek a 20% pay increase for a $hite job with crap hours, pretty crap pay, constant risk of verbal and/or physical assault.

TD's on the other hand, are currently paid twice as much as bus drivers, with none of the above-mentioned disadvantages to the job. I find it more than a tad hypcritical of the government to say that they cannot give the drivers a 20% increase on 20,000 a year when they are about to vote themselves a 30% increase on 35.000 a year.

Paladin

On the other hand I say that however bad our government is, its better than having bus drivers running the country.

TwoShedsJackson

That's what I call an entirely debatable point

Hobbes

Originally posted by Shinji:
BTW, Hobbes, 22k is more than a lot of well-qualified computer professionals earn.

Prehaps so.

However if your only getting 22K or less for being an expert IT professional (qualified != expert or even knowledgable) then your in the wrong job/country.

Btw do all of them earn 22K? Or is that the upper bracket limit? How many hours do they work? What is the job benifits? (eg. Medical, shares, whatever).