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Dublin Bus...Bleak future unemployment

rokz

I am writing to you regarding the job losses in Dublin Bus.

Sadly my partner has just been informed that her job will be gone in four weeks.I do understand that cutbacks are necessary. (but where..?)Last May my partner applied for a job with Dublin Bus as a driver,they trained her in and she passed her test in record time.everything looked great....her life has been changed.She was promised a bright new career subject to being appointed after 12 months probation period.She has had no incidents whatsoever. so her future was looking very secure.So on the strength of her success she got a bank loan so she could buy herself a car and also some renovations on the house....I'm sure you can understand the sadness she and her fellow workers now feel. During the last couple of days she has found it very depressing even going to work as there are grown men crying in her workplace. who have just moved into ther new homes ,expecting babies,and who have given up good jobs to work for Dublin Bus...It is so sad. she was told it will be a job for life..really

But what I can't understand is the logic of letting the lowest paid drivers go ...and keeping the staff that don't turn up for work and earn over four times my partners wage.These newly trained low paid drivers are only there to fill in for the large volume of staff who don't turn up for work, and have no loyalty to there job, and who knows how to "work the system."(as they say)It makes me also wonder why they spent so much time and effort training her in the first place considering the financial situation Dublin bus was in last year.Bad management I believe
Personally I feel that it should be the fat cats that have caused this situation and it is them who should suffer.( some staff;s pay is exceeding over €2000and as for the management..!)...But yet they want to let go new drivers who take home approx €550.What I wonder is. are the people who make these harsh decision in touch with the real facts or are they advised by people who are basically trying to protect themselves Another point I would like to mention is ...Does the government realize that many of these low paid drivers also have children,mortgages,ect.What will it really cost in the long run when they start claiming unemployment benefits..with very little prospects of future employment...considering the economic situation .I can not imagine the cost to the government one family would be over the next ten years.....While the fat cat's can just retire and live off there very large nest eggs...and maybe in there property in the sun.This is just one reason.
We really want to be able to pay our taxes,our bank loans. and not rely on state benefits or have bailiffs looking for repossession.
the future looks bleak for us all.....well maybe not all... the fat cats who can afford to drive big flash cars(in bus lanes) and afford extortionate congestion charges.....I have sent this letter to some goverment parties. But guess what...no reply. Who do they listen to ..? not us anyway...

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El Stuntman

unfortunately this is how it works in union-controlled companies

last in, first out

hope it works out for you

AlekSmart

Notwithstanding rokz`s very obvious anger and despondency at the entire Bus Atha Cliath/Bus Eireann situation and its mishandling there remain aspects which need to be addressed.

Every clerical and wages grade employee of the CIE companies is required to serve a "Probationary" period in their grade of usually 12 months.

That requirement is an integral part of the Job offer and was always made clear at contract signing stage (certainly was for my group)

Essentially once one kept ones nose clean and behaved responsibly the appointment process was largely automatic with only a couple of local management interviews and some performance assessments to be undertaken.

However that is not to take away from the reality that during that period the employment contract is essentially a day-to-day one in terms of security of tenure.

Down through the years I have known of only a handful of probationary staff who were NOT appointed to the full-time staff and these cases tended to be largely no-hopers who most definitely had made a wrong career choice or experienced other difficulties within the job.

However,what IS different here is the scale of the redundancies within the Bus Group companies and the manner by which the companies arrived at this point.

In the case of Bus Atha Cliath we have 160 probationary drivers who were recruited largely to staff an expanding network.

The recruitment process for this new EXTRA staff complement came about only after Bus Atha Cliath submitted TO THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT a Full Business Plan for the utilization of the 100 EXTRA buses.

The Department of Transport (and presumably Dept of Finance) then sanctioned the purchase of the vehicles and the Immediate commencement of a recruitment drive to ensure that the necessary staff were in place when those extra Buses were delivered.

Subsequent to this matters turned interesting as Bus Atha Cliath attempted to deploy the newly approved and delivered resources.

What happened next was an example of high farce in the extreme as the Route Licencing section of the Department of Transport then essentially prevented the 100 extra buses from being placed into service in advance of a lengthy,and by no means success assured application process.

The net result of this example of what could be described as National Sabotage was the 100 buses lying idle for almost a year in Broadstone Depot as the Licencing Section deliberated by the light of a flickering candle.

The results of these deliberations were in themselves somewhat interesting as Bus Atha Cliath found themselves coralled into deploying these NEW resources onto route alignments which largely parallelled EXISTING routes.

Little wonder then that we now find Deloitte wondering aloud about duplication of routes such as with the 4,128,140,145 routes which made up the bulk of the new vehicle allocation.

Whilst the new routes have been successful,that has come at a cost of drawing customers away from pre-existing routes to no good avail and certainly not to the greater benefit of the commuter.

Proposed routings such as the 141 Swords to Rathgar were placed in a considerational limbo as the Licencing Section deliberates on what "Competition" actually entails in Irish Public Transport terms.

So almost 12 months late Bus Atha Cliath finally manages to get all of these new resources in place,only to find it`s customer base has fled...and that it now has a MInister who "suspects" the company is not effectively utilizing its resources.

Having then commissioned Deloitte to confirm his suspicions he recieves a report which does nothing of the sort,and in fact confirms that Bus Atha Cliath and Bus Eireann are as efficiently run as is possible under the pre-existing regulatory framework.

Some scope to do better in both companies,but essentially no "Smoking Gun" so obviously desired by the Minister and instead a set of recommendations which have been the stuff of Canteen Talk within the companies for years now.

It is sad therefore for me to read rokz depiction of a divided company and the description of an old wives tale picture of Bus Atha Cliath staff earning vast sums for doing nothing except pulling sickies.

These newly trained low paid drivers are only there to fill in for the large volume of staff who don't turn up for work, and have no loyalty to there job,

This,for example,is no longer an accurate charge to make against BAC staff and has not been a viable one for many years now.

The Company most assuredly DID have a turgid sickness and absence problem (Quite an industry problem across the EU in the face of longer driving hours and worsening conditions).
However a new set of Grieviance and Disciplinary operating systems including Absence Control,Attendance Monitoring,Chief Medical Officer Referrals and Local Management "Interviews" has turned around the entire issue of poor attendance.

The NEW staff were recruited for NEW work which the Company was given to understand was implicitly approved following the acceptance of the Business Plan.

The fact that this NEW work subsequently failed to materialize is surely down to the as yet still unexplained behaviour of the Department of Transport and its Minister in refusing the necessary permissions for NEW Route Licences to serve areas currently NOT served by mainstream public transport.

Sadly the reality of things hinge upon this phrase....

She was promised a bright new career subject to being appointed after 12 months probation period

What we now have is the company simply taking advantage of the legality of that situation,something which I feel given the Minister for Transport`s unique position vis-a-vis the management of the company,should be challenged in the courts.

The other interesting question which remains unanswered is why BAC Management reportedly departed from normal practice in this matter by NOT first discussing these proposals at main or subsidiary Board level,whereupon of course the directly appointed representatives of the Minister sit...HMmmmmm

rokz

Thanks for your imput regarding this troublesome dilema...Your knoledge has answered some questions that has puzzled us . So the end result is the governments lack of leadership is the main cause. It is amazing when your left hand does'nt know what your right hand is doing.But i suppose in normal practise ..ordering 100 odd busses without having pre-approved routes is also sign of bad management.Your suggestion regarding taking them to court. I believe it is not somthing that would achieve any success ...! just more financial stress..But it would be nice..!.Imagine 160 probationary staff winning this case.Do you really think there is any chance of success.

Zynks

OP, this is unfortunate and I wish I had a solution to offer, but as mentioned above, that is how union controlled/monopolies go.

Drawing a parallel, it is a bit like a pyramid scheme. The early entrants do well, and do better than anyone else. The main difference is that this is fed by tax payers money and protected by the state, which makes it harder for the pyramid to fall apart, unlike "private sector pyramids" which desintegrate once they run out of fools.

AlekSmart

ordering 100 odd busses without having pre-approved routes is also sign of bad management.Your suggestion regarding taking them to court. I believe it is not somthing that would achieve any success ...! just more financial stress..

In the normal course of events I would concur with your Bad Management comment,however in the specific case of Bus Atha Cliath/Bus Eireann their status as State Owned Commerical Enterprises cannot be downplayed.

My core point is that in the VERY recent past,Ministers of this Government were to be found repeatedly at the top-table of National Development Plan 2000-2006 and Transport 21 launches.

Time after time a dutifully diligent media would sup the Departments Wine and munch the Departmental canapès before hurrying to the laptop to write yet more gushing uninquisitive prose to lull an unsuspecting puplic into an even deeper sleep.

Some of us were never at all easy with all this talk of €34 BILLION plans for Public Transport which would see our largely 19th Century systems truly become Transport for the 21 st Century.

The entire thing never got off the ground at all in Bus terms.
No New COMPLETE QBC`s
No New complimentary Infrastructure
No agreed expansion with NEW services.

This would be bad enough BUT it should be borne in mind that this lack of support structure was pre-existing to the sourcing and purchase of the EXTRA buses.

It should be noted that being a State Owned company it would be necessary for FULL CIE Board consideration and approval to be given before the subsidiary companies could recruit the EXTRA staff of which the OP`s partner is one.

Thus we can surmise that the Department`s of Transport and Finance and possibly even the Taoiseach (Remember this was under Mr Ahernes tenure) were thus fully engaged in the ACTUAL decision making process at an early stage.

I personally believe that there exists a prime-facie case for the relevant Government Departments to answer in relation to the SPECIFIC decision to recruit the EXTRA staff necessary to operate the EXTRA services,which incredibly were then essentially refused by the same Department.

However it is straying into the area of LAW either employment,labour or civil and I am NOT a lawyer by any means,but this entire scenario simply STINKS to high heaven.

However I do believe that for the affected staff to have any hope of success they will have to be actually laid-off.
The overtures currently being spoken of include prospective re-employment as part-time drivers which is to me a certain downgrade in the actual job itself and perhaps an indication as to the prety poor PR surrounding the decision.

One potential benefit of the legal challenge avenue would be the results of the orders for discovery in relation to how the DEpartment of Transport adjudicated upon the Company`s Business Plan and its subsequent Route Licence applications.......Interesting prospects there I fear ???

rokz

Please enlighten me as to the future...? The prospects are looking like the weather.Do you have any new info regarding this situation.

thebigcheese22

It sickens me that it is a Government policy to get more people to us public transport while at the same time cutting the number of buses, routes and drivers. You cudnt fukcing make it up :mad:

Red Sleeping Beauty

thebigcheese22 wrote: »

It sickens me that it is a Government policy to get more people to us public transport while at the same time cutting the number of buses, routes and drivers. You cudnt fukcing make it up :mad:

It's getting surreal at this stage - 50,000 people on bicycles while it's snowing/freezing weather out and Dublin Bus is sacking workers and cutting routes.

Like you say, you couldn't make it up... well, unless you were Terry Pratchet

gurramok

Hindsight but why did these people who are being let go do the following?

who have given up good jobs to work for Dublin Bus.

Prospect of a good career in Dublin bus? If i had a good job, i would not leave it, maybe its just my personal opinion.

Anyway, it really is atrocious that they train a bunch of new drivers and then throw them out, talk about a huge waste of resources.
Its hardly an incentive now for anyone to join Dublin Bus if thats the way they treat new drivers.

Red Sleeping Beauty

Well I guess these drivers can either go work for McDonalds for this new lower minimum wage or they can wait until private companies come in to get the routes Dublin Bus will be cancelling....

These times should be a political timebomb in my opinion. These local elections will show us a lot.