BE strike [Read 1st post before posting]

end of the road wrote: »

this is claimed by the company, is there independant evidence to verify it?



if you are lucky to live on a commercial route, there is an alternative to be. if you don't, then there is unlikely to be any. not forgetting that it is unknown how long it would take to implement a replacement operator for PSO routes if be went to the wall. no extra tax is going to be paid for be unless there is going to be a large service increase which in my view is unlikely. it's up to workers to organise to get good terms and conditions. no point in blaming others because you don't get good terms and conditions.



i don't agree that they are.



only on commercial routes though. you can't be quicker if you have to serve everywhere, which the PSO routes do. subsidy would likely have to increase to provide more services going forward, whoever operates the routes, as with the country supposibly recovering then more workers = greater demand for services.

I wil deal with the first four bits i highlighted I cannot understand the lad section I highlighted so it is incorrect or just plain R******.

On the first point I have not seen union rubbish verified either, But I have seen/read articles that verify it.

While at present there are no viable alternatives because these PSO routes are protected from competition you cannot proof this point. But history tells us that viable alternatives are there.

Tax is tax if you subsidize or spend it carelessly or pay too much in wages then taxpayers must stump up it is not an endless pot.

end of the road wrote: »

there is going to be no savings with your suggestion as to provide any kind of a meaningful service the current level of subsidy will be required. it is after all among, if not the lowest in europe including with capital investment. subsidized services are going to cost the tax payer money, that is just how it is . if one wants public services to exist they are going to except that they will have to be paid for.



be is going nowhere.

This is incorrect TBH it is hard to read or understand. The reality is that while PS have to be paod for you can pay too much for them. A capital letter now and again would help your debating skills.

horseburger wrote: »

This is certainly a more pleasant exchange of views!

We might say that Shane Ross hasn't the "Big Balls" to get involved in this dispute, and save Bus Éireann, in the "Nick of Time", and that he is anything but a "Live Wire" on this issue!:D

TBH Shane Ross as an individual I detest him but in this case he is playing a blinder. To do nothing often is to do everything.

Stephen15 wrote: »

I can't see hundreds of communities going without a bus route. My prediction is a new similar scaled down company with the NTA taking a stronger fist down over the company will be set up minus expressway whose routes will be replaced by local services.

Altough your prediction could well be true but the clock is ticking so some sort of arrangement will need to be made within the coming days not a highly unrealistic prediction.

The NTA job is not to manage transport company's. There job is to manage transport infracture and to implement transport policy. An intresting stastic is that there is 30-50% extra capacity in the bus transport system. So plenty of cslack there.

monument wrote: »

Do you really think the Government would survive that?

It is not a government issue and Joe sixpack realizes that

end of the road wrote: »

money isn't taken out of other social services though. the money needed isn't fully put into them in the first place and wouldn't be even if the drivers were on minimum wage with nothing else unfortunately.

i would have agreed with you 20 years ago but not now.

Again capital letter now and again would help. But anyway, money is not a magic material. if it is wasted here on BE it cannot be spend elsewhere.

end of the road wrote: »

public approval is nice but it isn't going to make a difference to the outcome to this issue, only management and staff can make a difference. public reaction and pressure only makes a minister go yeh or nay on something if the government itself or part of it is for or against the issue. look at water charges, the biggest example of something with little support but which will be introduced in some form regardless of protests and everything else.

As the LUAS dispute showed public approval is important nowadays if you are going for the hard slog. I think unions will have to learn the hard way. But then again bought scense is better than thought sense

StringerBell wrote: »

The guy appointed to the company to oversee this is the same as did Clearys, I am pretty confident if the company is to fold, and be reborn that will be seen as a win.

The game? It suited the company best to not have to hire enough employees to cover the needs of the job at the time so that was it, of course the unions fought to get the best deal they could. That is there job.

I am not sure anybody believes there is nothing to be done other then cuts to management, which are necessary too imo anyway, but in themselves not sufficient. Shave off a few of the guys earning 100k+ a year couldn't hurt, but won't solve the problem.

The notion that the company has to be profitable is a myth that needs to go away now, it was never set up to be profitable, hence the subsidies. It is there to provide a public service, not to make money.

There is imo a need for scaling back on certain routes, there is a need for redundancies, voluntary preferably. I know of employees, not drivers, who receive a weekly "bonus" of 200/250 euro, for what I am not exactly sure, I seem to remember it being paid in lieu of something else, the practices have been ****ed for a long time. A restructure of the company and its operations is not the issue for me, cutting salaries, wage freezes, we have been there and done that. Real change is needed, from the top, with consent from all sides, neither has to be happy but has to be something both can live with.

My father would have actually been one of the members to vote No to an all out strike, but it is what we have right now. I think you will find wading through pages and pages of this bull**** is going to do you any good if I'm honest, may aswell just listen to Joe Duffy instead, least you can do it while driving!

TL;DR - There is no good solution , people need to be realistic and understand that the company is not there to make money. Management needs to trim the fat, routes and drivers also need to be curbed to varying degrees.

There are a lot of families facing uncertainty and worrying about the future in this, many more people affected then the amount of actual employees and the human side is often forgotten about. There has been literally no move from the company to engage, even before this they were putting one message through the media and sending another message directly to the inspectors. Best thing people can do is step away from the spin and if they really want to gain an understanding of the situation then put in some effort to research.

The cynic in me see's a divide and conquer approach, that will most likely succeed due to the failure to win the PR battle or at the very least actually manage to get the facts of the matter out from the Union side.

I'm way too tired to be attempting to focus on this post right now, I apologize for the rambly nature.

Reading through this post you either are delude or have a total misunderstand of the running of a business. Firstly if it folds it will not be reborn. It will be like Irish shipping it will be gone and gone forever. The company did not have too few staff it had too many. PO had 1.8 staff/bus, BE had over 5/bus and were paying them OT as well:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Of course a company has to be profitable no business can sustain losses, the issue witn BE is that after subvention ( and for slow learners it is getting a direct subvention, buses provided at a cost to the taxpayer you and me, it is also getting taxx support in the way of commuter tax relief) and it still it losing money.

You are right there is no good solution but the best option is to walk away from it.

StringerBell wrote: »

You keep saying rogue strike when you mean to say, legal strike. Or do you simply disagree with striking in general? Workers rights? **** workers rights kind of thing?

Yes workers have rights but so have employers and so have tax payers.

StringerBell wrote: »

This comment from one of online sections of a newspaper is interesting.

The complete lack of interest from Shane Ross is telling its own story.

TBH it not worth replying to.

BoatMad wrote: »

What can he do. The state cannot subvent expressway.

This is the nub of the matter but again we have slow learners

Ranjo wrote: »

Any suggestions on where to look for alternate options during the strike? Been OK so far as I've been able to get in the car & bring Jnr to school (secondary) but I'm away next week so he'll be completely stranded.

where are you going from/to - kind of essential information...

end of the road wrote: »

the PSO routes are never going to have actual competition whoever operates them. someone on a PSO route is unlikely to ever be able to choose between operators.



the luas dispute showed public opinion means jot. little public support for it and yet they still got a good deal. the vitreal i read because private sector workers went on strike was like nothing i had read before but they still got a good deal.

Yes PSO routes are protected from Competition. However if BE goes to the wall new services will be provided quickly in lots of cases. In some cases commercial operators may apply for a licience with out PSO funding and they may consider the routes viable without subsidity.

You are incorrect again the LUAS dispute showed how public opinion stopped workers from claiming crazy pay rates and the final deal they got was not as good as a one previous offered. You are incorrect there was no vitriol in the papers to read rather hard analysis that showed how greedy the workers were and how stupid the workers/union demands were. They started with a 60% pay claim and ended up with approx 35/year