Do you support the Dublin Bus workers?

listermint wrote: »

Very much everything to do with it.

You have idiots on here calling for privatisation and deregulation of the national bus services. This is putting social services into the hands of big business.

How does this have nothing to do with it ?

Sure if you let half the idiots on here have their way they would privatise everything. Which is exactly what large corporate interests want us to do. This is why they own large news media organisations so they can dupe the idiot public into picking off each other. Its actually a simple plan when people are such sheep.


Take a step back and look at the bigger picture. There is NO such thing as people power anymore.

So actually Dublin Bus drivers aren't striking because of cuts to their overtime allowance. They're fighting the spread of worldwide corporatism.
How could we have been so blind?
We need to pay these guys more, not less. fcuk the budget deficit, some things are more important.

Why can't mopre people see this?
Because they're idiots, just like you say.
Crazy, crazy idiots.

Foxtrol wrote: »

Dermot O’Leary of the NBRU must be misinformed about the attendance bonus as well then as he didn’t disagree with that information when it was put to him on Drivetime last night.

They aren’t getting scrapped, the drivers are going to get a profit share of any fuel savings with the introduction of fuel efficiency systems in the buses instead of the safety bonus and the drivers will still get a bonus payment if they don’t miss 4 days a year. The Union has come out opposing the latter change (not sure about the former) which says a lot about how out of touch they are if they think that missing that high number of days are year is still worth a bonus.

An attendance bonus doesn’t make business sense it just means the drivers are a bunch of chancers and the company doesn’t have the will or disciplinary system in place to punish those who abuse sick days (apparently until it gets to a ridiculous point of 12 days).

See like I said the LC rec is vague it doesn't spell out what the fuel efficiency thing is how it would work, what equipment will be put in the cab, what is the cost of this equipment, what else could this equipment be used for etc etc. It says this has to be worked out as the company don't have any set proposal so how can you accept a deal when the company don't even know what it is?

like i said before driving a bus is not like other jobs where you can go to work even if you are not feeling great, where toilet facilities are provided. Bus drivers are in a cab with none of that for up to 5 or 6 hours at a time. Dodgy tummy and you can't risk going to work as you have no where to go.

Sir Humphrey Appleby wrote: »

People power me hole!
The only ones in unions these days are the spoilt brats in the PS and Semi State sector, eager to keep their snouts in the public trough and who dont give a toss who has to pay the bill for the greed and sense of entitlement!

Name one other group capable of affecting political change at their level.

Your caricature of these workers just reflects your own narrow-minded ideology, that (as others say) just tries to foster a public vs private 'divide and conquer' narrative, as well as a 'there is no alternative' narrative that tries to assert austerity on us as the only choice (when it serves to distract us from the solutions we should be seeking at a European level, and that if Europe fails us - as it has for the last half decade - we need to have a hard look at regaining political/economic independence).

We're facing even more widespread destruction of our public services over the next decade, and the workers in these public services are the only remaining front-line who can credibly push back against this ideology-based destruction of our economy - about time too I think, as féck all chance of getting proper protests going in this country.


People need to realize that cuts dig us deeper into crisis, and that the only solution that will get us out of this in the next decade, is a massive (preferably EU-wide) stimulus program which doesn't have to involve ramped-up taxes (which would in fact roll-back taxes as part of the stimulus), as is the usual myth economic conservatives try to assert when discussing this.

Public spending, including that going to these workers, pumps up the private economy (a public sector deficit, is by definition, a private sector surplus) - a private sector currently starved of money - so when you lend support to cutting public sector expenditure, you lend support to deflating the private sector as well.

I love the way the defenders of dublin bus drivers always cite the way the government are trying to pit public service against private service workers in a bid to distract us from the real issues.

If that's the case, maybe public service workers should give up all the crazy perks and allowances and job security and DB pensions, before calling for a show of unity.

It's hard to stomach the 'we're all in this together attitude', when my taxes are being used to fund crazy public service work practices.

Frank Black wrote: »

I love the way the defenders of dublin bus drivers always cite the way the government are trying to pit public service against private service workers in a bid to distract us from the real issues.

If that's the case, maybe public service workers should give up all the crazy perks and allowances and job security and DB pensions, before calling for a show of unity.

It's hard to stomach the 'we're all in this together attitude', when my taxes are being used to fund crazy public service work practices.

Your taxes are being used to give bond payments to many of the financial institutions that created this crisis, and who are funding an entire political/economic ideology, designed to hold us in this crisis by pushing austerity on us.

It is idiocy to be wrangling over public sector pay, without seeing the bigger picture that they don't have to be funded with taxes, because Europe is perfectly capable of engaging in a massive stimulus program, which is being held at bay due to promoting of austerity ideology.

We want high public sector pay, and that is not synonymous with higher taxes (we actually want both higher public sector pay and less taxes at the same time). The private sector is starved of money, and by definition, a public sector deficit is a (much needed) private sector surplus - these striking workers haven't got their hands in our pockets, the fúcking financiers/bankers have (and have had for a long time), and these workers are being ground down just like everyone else, except they have the capability and balls to go on strike over it.

They, unionized workers, are the only group left in this country that can make any political difference at all, because our population is so bloody docile in the face of this crisis - and are so willing to fall for this public vs private sector 'divide and conquer' bollocks. Ignorance and idiocy for the most part, that drives people views against them, failing to see the much bigger picture here.