Do you support the Dublin Bus workers?

saintsaltynuts wrote: »

I was getting on a bus last week while it was pissin rain.The bus driver said to me.."You'll have to wait for the next bus we're full".I said "How long's the next bus?".."He said about Fifteen foot!".....Bastard!

The bus is about thirty feet long but that's irrelevant, why should a bus driver know the time of arrival of the next bus.
You may find the time of the next bus by texting the bus stop number to dublin bus.
As to your abusive language it displays your right wing tendencies.

cdebru wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/dublin-bus-at-top-of-world-safety-league-26568533.html

I'd read the article

Claims baised off buses per million and distance travelled

No actual records of how many accidents pa

Considering the 8 million in paypouts you quoted earlier

I'll wait for real documented evidence

cdebru wrote: »

and it is not 26k or 46k it is about 38,500 and there are very significant costs in not having people who can do the job properly, even as the safest bus company DB still pays out about 8 million a year in claims imagine what that figure would be if you were paying minimum wage.

You're making a bit of a jump there to assume there's some causal link between the remuneration of a driver and the company's safety record. Ireland itself has an internationally excellent road safety record, Dublin is proportionally the safest city in Ireland to drive in, and the busses have thousands of KM of dedicated lanes to use. So one could equally make the argument that DB has a good safety record by default - i.e. the driving environment in Dublin is such that you would need to have a workforce of bad drivers to have a bad safety record. If you have a force of averagely-competent drivers, then your safety record for driving in Dublin should be pretty good.

It's also a big mistake to assume that safety is purely down to the individual driver. The company's processes and training regimes could be such that whether someone is getting 28k or 68k, they receive ample training to ensure that they come out as all pretty good drivers.

homerjay2005 wrote: »

only in ireland would people see nothing wrong with the fact that according to them, average wages is 38.5k, but the company actually pays out 54k for each employee.....does all the 15k go on pensions and insurance?

The company could also be factoring in a pile of other costs there - training, uniforms, average sick days, employer's PRSI, etc etc etc. In stuff like this you'll have the company's side, which is to paint employee costs as exorbitant, the union's side, which paints all employees as barely scraping by above the minimum wage who "can't take any more", and then you have the reality which falls somewhere in the middle.

I think the union are onto a loser here though. They seem to have little or no public support. I barely saw any difference in traffic volumes today. Lots of people walking, a handful of extra cars, but overall not much different to any other summer's day. If they went on strike during a cold and wet October week, it would be a different story. As it stands if they strike all week, half of their customers might actually grow to enjoy walking into work instead of bussing it.

cdebru wrote: »

That was 2011 wages and salaries were 148 million in 2012 and employees were 3236

But you are correct, he is deliberately misleading

This is a joke, everyone else outside Dublin seems to manage without public Transport and we don't see them whinging. There is no sympathy for the workers whatsoever outside the pale. It was hilarious listening to one of the "howeyazz" drivers being interviewed at a picket and all you could hear in the background were the rest of them laughing away. Back to work ya lazy feckers!

What are the proposed changes the bus drivers are striking over:

Labour Court recommendations

• No proposal to reduce core or basic pay
• Reductions in rest day and overtime pay on Sunday to double time from 2.5
• Rest day rate on Monday to Saturday to be paid at a time and a quarter, down from time and a half
• Monday to Saturday overtime to be paid at time and a quarter for the first two hours and time and a half thereafter, rather than time and a half every hour
• Public holidays on a normal day to be paid at time and one quarter plus statutory entitlement
• Public rest day rate and overtime to be paid at time and one quarter plus statutory entitlement
• The court also recommended that a total of four days self-certified sick leave should be permitted in a calendar year with no more than two such days allowed in a six-month period. This is a change from the seven days a year that drivers currently have.