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The great big bus driver shortage. Why in the name of god would you drive a bus these days anyway...

d51984

As the title suggests why? Horrible hours, , not been able to see your family and kids a lot, working horrible shifts, daily abuse and the money isnt the best neither.

I worked at Dublin bus, put up with the abuse, the **** hours. I left couldn't do it anymore. Now I'm working Monday to Friday, 6am-2pm in a warehouse for a large retailer, and guess what?. Im coming out with nearly 200 euro more and have my weekends free.

I feel better, my stress levels are way down and for the first time in a long time Im happy.

Driver shortages are just going to get worse, a lot of drivers leaving aswell, why would anyone join the industry now? What can be done to change things?

Thoughts??....

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Nighttime22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058270117/the-great-big-bus-driver-shortage-why-in-the-name-of-god-would-you-drive-a-bus-these-days-anyway

There are a lot of job industries that are going to have to up there wages significantly as people arent doing them, you wont have to worry about balance sheets when no one is driving for the company. Too many bullshit jobs in companies these days that are grossly over paid.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119877989#Comment_119877989

You could say very few people in general choose to become bus drivers as it dosen't appear to be the most sought after career path. Back in the 90s and early 2000s DB still did seem to be considered a good job to have but now not so much and I don't think anything has changed that majorly to make it much worse.

On the subject of women I do notice a lot more women driving for DB and GAI now compared to even 10 or 15 years ago so obviously some of the recruitment campaigns targeting women have worked. But I do notice very few women driving for any of the private operators like Aircoach, Citylink, Dublin Coach etc. or driving private hire coaches and I'm on the road a lot and would notice these things Bus Eireann seem to have a few but not to the extent of DB or GAI. I find that interesting do women feel less inclined to do long distance work than city work.

I'd say it's not really on the radar for a lot of women and I guess it can be a bit odd being the only woman sitting in a canteen full of men and vice versa for say nurses. That and of course the toilet situation.

I would say the thing putting off the younger generation and that's not me bashing the younger generation I'm in my mid twenties myself is that a lot of the younger generation seem a little bit work shy. The hours of bus driving is not conducive to meeting up with your friends or having much of a social life. Which is slightly ironic as there's more of a demand for people to provide transport to facilitate said social life.

Stephen Gawking

To be honest having watched that current affairs programme on RTÉ last night (the title escapes me, sorry) the woman dublin bus driver talking about anti social behaviour will no doubt have changed some potential applicants minds about apply for a job as a driver & to be honest who'd blame them? I wouldn't do it thats for sure.

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119877989#Comment_119877989

I'm not sure how you think it is misguided at all. Driving a bus is way down the scale of job preference for women. The reasons for this are irrelevant to the point I made, which was about bang for your buck. Targeting women in the recruitment campaign was guaranteed to yield poorer results in the final numbers recruited had they advertised the job to everyone.

Why is it necessary to address the imbalance of male to female bus drivers? I don't see any attempt to address the imbalance in any female dominated sectors. I say advertise the job/career/post, let people apply and hire the most suitable candidates. Targeting women who are less interested in driving a bus than men is just not logical if the aim is to address a shortage. Would be different if there was not such a shortage, then it would make more sense diversifying the workforce if that was the aim.

I agree with you that many young people are very work shy. Many have never had a job in their teens and expect the world to be served up to them. Driving a bus might seem like hard work to them compared to sitting in front of a computer screen half the day. I also agree that DB pays a far better starting salary than the majority of jobs, including those requiring years of education and training.

Burt Renaults

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119878810#Comment_119878810

You're being willfully obtuse, right? It's important to target women (and other groups that aren't represented in the industry, such as eligible people in their twenties) because there's an overall shortage. The job already is being advertised to everyone, but there's nothing wrong with additionally targeting underrepresented groups, for the sole purpose of addressing the shortage.

And I never said anything about young people being "work shy". I've found the opposite to be the case, and don't know any who didn't have jobs in their teens. You seem to have an awful lot of prejudices.

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119879529#Comment_119879529

You seem to be a bit slow to understand the basic idea that every euro spent trying to encourage a minority audience, or even a larger audience of less interested people is a less effective euro. Splitting the recruitment spend like that only dilutes the impact and results in lower numbers.

Does it matter more that DB has a full compliment of qualified drivers, or would you prefer staff shortages as long as there is gender and ethnic diversity behind the wheel? Tell, me please why it's so important to have drivers of any specific gender or ethnicity?

Personally I couldn't give a damn what gender, colour, ethnicity or religion the person driving the bus, train, plane, or donkey.....as long as they know what they are doing and can get the mode of transport safely from A to B. That's not prejudice chappy. I just don't virtue signal to please the audience.

sudocremegg

I have a bus licence and I take intercity buses about once a month and city buses regularly.

It seems like a very stressful job, and having to drive for that length of time often 3+ hours without a break seems really difficult. In my current driving job I can pull over and swap drivers whenever I get drowsy, and as any driver knows this can happen at any time and it's impossible to fight. Especially after eating your lunch and going back on shift to drive.

I understand the difficulties drivers face with ars*hole passengers too but I've encountered many many drivers over the years who are clearly not in a fit state of mind to be doing the job. One of the bus eireann school bus drivers I had dealings with on more than one occasion drove the bus extremely wrecklessly, once driving through a level crossing on purpose, and would regularly be screaming his lungs out at other drivers. He'd often stop the bus and threaten the children, in the end he was showing one of the primary school girls pornography on his phone.

When reported to BE and the Gardai the union closed ranks and fought his corner tooth and nail and the company themselves didn't want to hear anything about it. It's a long story but it as a very sickening culture to encounter within the body and the cover up I experienced.

Another intercity bus driver more recently went on what I could only describe as a rampage while driving the airport intercity bus. Got into verbal arguments with every passenger, refused to stop in the bus aras bay (instead blocked the exit tunnel) and got into heated verbal arguments with other drivers who were beeping at him. Followed by a call on loud speaker from his supervisor asking him why he didn't pick up the passengers at the bay. The supervisor got more abuse at the top of his lungs. Followed by roaring back at the passengers while he was driving.

One JJ Kavanagh on a route I travel the driver regularly likes to insult passengers immediately for asking simple questions (i.e the fare or destination).

I've lost count the amount of times I've seen city route drivers act the total bollocks to totally innocent or vulnerable people over nothing. Not to mention the whole driving past stops while empty shíte that goes on.

The whole culture around bus driving seems beat, a lot of the drivers seem like they should have retired a long time ago.

Quite frankly, you couldn't entice me to drive a bus for less than €50k at a minimum.

Burt Renaults

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119879846#Comment_119879846

I strongly suspect that you wouldn't have any issue with a campaign to persuade more younger people to consider bus driving as a career. Which, along with the term "virtue signal" in your last sentence, tells me everything I need to know. Any campaign that attracts more people, who wouldn't otherwise have considered driving buses, can only be a good thing.

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119882885#Comment_119882885

If the use of the term "virtue signal" tells you all you need to know, then I suspect your capacity to understand the difference between the benefits of general recruitment and targeted recruitment, (the former of which DB needs to implement under the circumstances) is limited. Let me put it in a simple way using your own words: Any campaign that attracts less people can only be a bad thing.

Idiots spending someone else's money don't focus on increasing the numbers with minimal spend. Instead of recruiting 100 drivers from mass campaigns, they are content enough spending that money on targeted groups and adding a dozen women/foreign nationals/hindi drivers because apparently diversity is more important than having a driver for the buses left parked up at the depot.

Do you care if the person driving the bus is a man or a woman, black or white, catholic or atheist? If I take public transport, the only thing I care about regarding the driver....is that they do their job safely. This is certainly better than being left waiting for a bus that won't arrive because the recruitment team are busy looking for ethnic minority drivers. We are an economy at full employment and the net needs to be cast wide to catch as many interested people as possible.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119883942#Comment_119883942

Diverse businesses perform better

https://feedier.com/blog/diversity-transportation-perfom-better/

hairymaryberry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119881349#Comment_119881349

So what your saying is driving a bus makes people go off the deep end?

So drivers start the job after interview to see if they are suitable, if so they get the job and they are on probation for 1 year, during this year can be fired easily for minor infractions, this will weed out those unsuitable for the job, then as the years progress the previously mentally stable driver slowly start to become unhinged.

I wonder why?

Dublin Bus drivers have been assaulted 429 times over the last five years and 3,344 anti-social behaviour incidents in the same period.

Remember this includes 2 years of covid with near empty buses so i would guess if 5 years of full service it would be 500 assaults and 4,000 anti-social behaviour incidents, is it any wonder drivers are leaving and little interest from the public in applying for the job, these assaults and anti-social behaviour incidents are something the public have witnessed with their own eyes, its no secret that will be sprung on drivers once they start the job, and if for some miraculous reason they where unaware they will soon get first hand experience of it.

https://www.newstalk.com/news/stop-the-fing-bus-you-stupid-bh-dublin-bus-drivers-facing-regular-assaults-1400715#:~:text=Kathleen%20Owens%20was%20speaking%20as,Newstalk%20Breakfast%20this%20happens%20regularly.

Well yesterday as i was on break sitting at table with 6 drivers , male and female, new to the job and 25+ years in the job, the consensus is its going to be a chaotic 2023 once the new routes and rosters are rolled out, and not a single driver really cares, complete apathy is the the order of the day.

The powers that be showed how much contempt they have for drivers with the pay deal and the coming changes, there would be a stamped to the managers office if redundancy was offered, the unions are asking for it but have been refused so far, this hopefully will change as the night shift will be compulsory for the drivers hired the last few years but not for those here 5+ years, this will cause problems, the way out would be to get us all on the same contract, so redundancy for those who don't want to go on new contract, well that is the hope of drivers.

Drivers who are 10+ years years spare are angry that the NTA want to cancel marking in and have all drivers work every route and duty in the depot on one big roster, in other words spare forever, that will be the big push in the next pay deal in 2025, both marked in and spare don't want this, so many drivers have stated once the pension is secure they are gone from this job.

Once the real changes "agreed" in the pay deal start to kick in, that's when you will see the bus service start to collapse, no doubt about it, you have seen nothing yet, and as it gets worse the public get more angry which leads to more assaults and anti-social behaviour, which in turn makes more drivers leave and the job even less attractive to potential new drivers, its in a downward spiral and the NTA don't care or are grossly incompetent.

Maybe the NTA want a collapse so they can privatise the lot of it? Looks that way

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119884032#Comment_119884032

I wouldn’t consider that article to be a good indicator on diversity and performance for bus driver jobs. I’m not interested enough to research it more deeply. The problem DB has (as do most companies/industries) is a lack of numbers. IMO they greater urgency should be on numbers rather than diversification. They don’t have the luxury to be wasting money on low yield recruitment campaigns.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119885112#Comment_119885112

Exactly privatisation is what the NTA want. For many years on here posters were demanding DB be privatised NTA granted their wish and we got GAI. Problems with DB getting worse but GAI 10× worse said posters now gone completely silent.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119885415#Comment_119885415

I don't think NTA actually want privatisation. If they did, then surely they would have gone the full London Bus model and broke Dublin Bus into multiple companies and privatised each, just like in London. Instead they went for the smallest amount of privatisation possible, while still keeping within EU rules for opening up markets to competition.

DB really couldn't have asked for a better setup.

To be honest I'd be very careful what you wish for. You seem to think that if GAI fails, that it means DB get everything back.

But it is just as likely, perhaps even more likely that the NTA decides to go down the full London Bus style privatisation model. Break DB into spearate companies along the lines of depots and then put them out to tender. If they include the existing depots and actual core bus corridors, you can bet there will be a lot more interest from all London Bus operating private companies, as it would be more inline with their operating model.

To be clear, I'm not looking for this to happen. I'm just saying be seriously careful on what you wish for.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119887264#Comment_119887264

There's no such thing as London Bus it's actually called TFL. NTA would do London style tendering if they could that's exactly what GAI is. Reason why they don't is because of the unions in DB would strongly object to that if that happened. GAI is probably a trial for that.

Actually unions in DB initially strongly objected to the tendering when it was first announced back in 2015 there was even a strike over it but they agreed to it once assurances were put in place that drivers didn't have to transfer to the new operator which ended up being GAI.

The unions are right though you can be damn if more routes went out to tender working conditions would suffer as a result. Okay there's TUPE but these private operators don't take input from unions to same extent as DB.

Also in the UK say a bus driver is involved in an accident they will literally trawl through CCTV footage to try and catch the driver out especially if it's a senior driver who's on more money and a better contract than a new driver even if the driver is not at fault they will go through the previous 15 minutes of footage leading up to the accident to see say did the driver do any thing they weren't supposed like say block a yellow box and if they have then they'll be displined especially so if it's a senior driver who's on a better pay and contract than a newer driver. This is unacceptable and wouldn't fly in DB because the unions will actually stand up for drivers in these incidences.

hairymaryberry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119878224#Comment_119878224

Here it is. Worth a watch to see what is happening day in day out

rte.ie/player/series/monday-night-live/10000135-00-0000?epguid=IH10000134-22-0006

I’m sure DB & GAI are now overwhelmed by the number of new applications for a job after this aired.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119878013#Comment_119878013

No, wages will not be increased. The solution is here: https://www.irishtimes.com/transport/2022/11/15/non-eu-bus-drivers-may-be-brought-in-to-solve-recruitment-crisis/

Cookie_Monster

Non EU, so from where? N America, Aus & NZ all have the same issue. Maybe the UK, lol.

Just in the news here yesterday that another 140 departures daily in Wellington have been cancelled permanently due to the shortages, in addition to 60 in October.

Everywhere has shortages...

https://www.iru.org/system/files/IRU%20Global%20Driver%20Shortage%20Report%202022%20-%20Summary.pdf

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892650#Comment_119892650

Non-Eu would realistically be any country with a lower wage so that new comers don't expect for a huge salary raise. Ideally, with lower than average language skills so that they'd be more loyal to the company (not knowing the language well keeps people away from changing jobs). We still have some Europeans non-Eu countries we could aim to: Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia...

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119894842#Comment_119894842

Makes a bit of a mockery bringing in people from abroad when there's people with D licences like myself who get rejected Dublin born and bred. Say it would be a something GAI would do as opposed to DB/BE.

Burt Renaults

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119895015#Comment_119895015

To be fair to GAI, bringing in labour from abroad is something that they've never done. Unless you include the drivers who transferred from sister-companies in the UK. They specialise in turning B licence holders into bus drivers, and thanks in no small part to a very good team of ADIs, they've done an excellent job of that. The less said about their ability to hold onto those drivers, the better, but the driver shortage would probably be a whole lot worse if they weren't around.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119895293#Comment_119895293

The 2k bond dosen't seem to be much of a detterent to stop people leaving. I did see an ad on FB a while ago an agency looking for D licence holders to be based in Ballymount, Dublin 12 don't what other other bus company is based there so wonder if they've gotten any drivers from agencies.

If they improved their rosters they'd get more drivers to stay either shorten the duties and have drivers 5 over 7 or make them longer but offer more time off. 11/12 hour shifts of 4 on 4 off would suit some especially would help cut back on travel expenses for those commuting long distances.

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119895015#Comment_119895015

To be honest, a fair percentage of Irish nationality workers aren't that great... I've worked in a good few places, including some large companies, and often find Irish people being less loyal, and require some special treatment, are a bit lazy and complain (especially men) too much - rather than focusing to the work and completing the tasks, they just walk around complaining how much work they have... Foreigners at least have a feeling of appreciation and value their job, and try to do it quickly and accurately, following the instructions/requirements rather than complaining or finding excuses to cover up their lack of focus to work and distractions.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119895701#Comment_119895701

Nonsense if ever I heard it

john boye

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119895701#Comment_119895701

A lot of multinationals here seem to think the same for whatever reason.

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119896006#Comment_119896006

There definitely is an element of culture too. Some people culturally are more independent than the others - some like to be monitored and micromanaged. A problem with loyalty is getting greater with a new generation. I'm facing so many issues with them not turning up for a job interview, being late, inefficient etc. Some nationalities in general are better at something than the others (could be a cultural or educational thing)... this is particularly noticeable during these staff shortage times when we waste a company's budget for salaries, but get just an average output. We need people who work with high standards... I've noticed people from economically more advanced places require more from their workplace. This could be the reason they're looking for non-Eu drivers - they'd complain less and work more. This is an important element creating a strong economy. Employee should always create a better value than they receive, and they shouldn't think them working for the company only. We get paid from the businesses, but actually create value to the society. So many people think they do a favour by turning up for work and doing their job because they have an understanding that they create a higher value than get a salary in return. That's a bad attitude as employees also get training and experience. Again some would say that experience is for a work place to use through the employees... Imagine if we had robots working for us... People always have to be realistic with their skills and reevaluate how current knowledge and skills are relevant for today and how relevant they're going to be tomorrow.

TranslatorPS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119895562#Comment_119895562

But GAI rosters are mostly that - if on a five-day roster, then the 10+ hour days are most often balanced out with shorter 6-7 hour pieces. Then there are actual four-day rosters with all 10+ hour days. Things have in fact changed since the 2018 launch.

Ironman76

Driving a bus was a great job back in the 90s when you could buy a house for 80k. There was tons of over time also.

Not such a good job now when you are paying 2k per month rent and you need to earn 100k+ to get your own house.

Also Dublin has become a lawless sh*thole kip where scumbags thrive. Can’t imagine the sh*t the drivers have to endure these days.

Qrt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119896892#Comment_119896892

Exactly, housing insecurity is the pretty much the whole reason that many many elements of the economy are just not functioning. Yet I still hear about cost-rental housing being "trialled" when it's pretty much the only way to get out of the mess that we're in.

Aside from that, shift work at anything other than four-on/four-off isn't going to appeal to me, and I think a lot of people would feel the same.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119896892#Comment_119896892

From an ASB aspect it would've been worse in the 1990s before autofare was introduced. Many drivers were attacked and threatened with things like knives and syringes in those days due to the presence of cash on the bus since autofare was introduced attacks decreased dramatically.