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Why Bus Workers are Right to Strike;

Why Bus Workers are Right to Strike;

The National Transport Authority tendering plan will decimate workers livelihoods and do nothing to improve public transport.

Bus workers are absolutely right to strike over the NTA proposal to tender out 10% of Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann routes. Despite claims that this isn’t privatisation, it means private companies will be handed routes currently operated by the semi state companies’ and even handed the buses that are currently owned by the state.

Claims that the NTA will guarantee drivers conditions as they are forced to move to a new private company are a joke to get the measure in. In reality drivers will have NO guarantee of long term conditions, rights, or rosters. Pension schemes and conditions like medical and travel facilities will be under threat as well. The entire purpose of the competitive tendering process is to attack the pay and conditions of unionised workers and conditions and rosters common in the private non-union transport sector. This is what the Fine Gael Minister O‘Donoghue is talking about when he says he wants to see “competitive tension” in the bus “market”.

The Government plan to hand over 10% will not end there. The NTA will move to tender out other routes by 2019 and use the same justifications for doing so which is EU laws and better efficiencies and services.

The proposals will do nothing for public transport. Not a single extra bus or journey will be added to public transport in Dublin or the South East. All that will happen is a private company employing drivers on reduced rates and conditions will operate the routes with state subsidies being diverted to the shareholders and owners of the private company.

The move is part of the neo-liberal policies beloved by Fine Gael and Fianna Fail and disgracefully supported by the miserable Labour Party.

The NTA claims it conducted research that proves the tendering policy works and cites a report it paid Ernst and Young to conduct. These were the company of consultants who previously gave Anglo Irish Banks a glowing report before they destroyed the economy. Such right wing consultants are wheeled out by Governments and quangos to justify the privatisation of public assets.

As Michael Taft of Unite points out, the Ernst and Young report used one report of the experience in other countries to justify privatisation, while ignoring other studies that contradict its pro-privatisation policy. These research reports showed that tendering schemes have not resulted in improved services and tax payers often end up paying more for privatised routes. What is universal is that private companies gain immense profits while worker’s wages and conditions get hammered; This is Fine Gael’s (and their helpers in Labour) real agenda.

Bus worker’s strike plans have rattled this government. Since the economic crash Irish workers have faced attack after attack with USC, lay-offs and cuts to pension rights. A new generation are now expected to work under job-bridge schemes and zero hours contracts.

Bus workers can stop the privatisation of these routes by a sustained campaign of industrial action and a wider campaign against the privatisation agenda. Such a fight can win support from the wider labour movement and give heart to many workers to resist similar attacks in their workplaces. Bus worker’s can bring the spirit of the water charges campaign into the labour movement and roll back years of austerity and anti-worker measures.

WHO ARE THE NTA;

The NTA is the regulator for all of Ireland's public transport; rail, bus and taxi. They are presented as an independent, neutral body. In fact they are staffed with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail hacks who are hand picked for their ideological commitment to competition and free markets. Their goal is to let rip against worker’s rights and conditions in currently unionised public or semi-state firms.

One board member, Valerie O’Reilly was a part of the ex-Fine Gael minister Michael Lowery’s constituency team. She has received over €55,000 thousand Euro for attending a meetings

Its chair is John Fitzgerald, the former Dublin City manager. He was the manager who pushed bin charges and he has been various boards like An Post and the HSE.

LIES ABOUT PUBLIC TRANSPORT;

The NTA and Government campaign to privatise bus routes are based on outright likes about public transport.

Lie 1: State companies get too much funding, their wasteful and inefficient.

IN FACT Dublin Bus gets a lower subsidy than most other comparable European cities, even some who are already privatised. The NTAs own report on Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann had to admit that both companies reached and exceeded ALL performance targets they were set by the NTA!! Even on the routes they now want to hand over to private companies.

Since 2008, state funding has declined even more drastically. While busy bailing out the banks, the state funding for public transport was savaged with services and jobs cut and fares rose dramatically over the last three years. Having created this crisis by underfunding, the Government and the NTA want to pretend it’s caused by lack of competition and inefficient public sector workers.

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LIE 2; The Luas is run by a private company, it gets no state funding and runs a profit; this shows how much more efficient private run companies are.

IN fact, as Brian Lucy has pointed out, Luas did not build its own rail system and is not expected to maintain their tracks and infrastructure. Instead taxpayers paid for these. For every one euro paid in fares, Luas passengers get a subsidy of €2.88 For every euro paid to Bus Éireann by comparison, there is a state subsidy of just €0.13. This means that the average LUAS fare covers less than 30% of the effective costs of each journey, while bus passengers are expected to pay for 90% plus for their trips.

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