Infratil / NZ Bus striking for more profits

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, October 8th, 2009 - 7 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, public transport, Unions - Tags:

Well the intransigent owners and managers of Infratil / NZ Bus finally went on strike this morning in their quest for higher profits. They locked out the bus drivers for threatening to abide by their contract. This is causing widespread chaos amongst other businesses as their employees are unable to get to work. We just dispatched a car into town to pick up some stranded employees.

In many areas of Auckland, there are alternate bus companies (who pay their employees more than NZ Bus) who will be getting bonus passengers. Because of the separation of bus routes between companies there are whole areas of Auckland that will not be covered by buses this morning. The ARC and whatever the super-shitty council winds up as being should make sure that that there are several bus companies covering the same areas to reduce the industrial issues.

The traffic on the motorways is heavy and liable to be getting a lot heavier as the passengers get out of busses and fill the car lanes. Not to mention that getting parking today is going to be chaotic.

Earlier this year I decided to stop driving to work. The cost of parking was getting excessive, the traffic was driving me nuts, and I wound up with at least an hour per day of frustrated radio listening. Some days this would be closer to 2 hours if there was a jam morning and evening. Not to mention getting more and more paranoid about idiot drivers on the road after getting rear-ended.

The buses were a haven. No parking issues. I could read my iPhone on the way to and from work. There was a coffee shop where I changed buses. It was only slightly slower than taking a car, despite having to change buses in town. There are bus lanes almost the whole way so I can look down on cars stuck in traffic jams. The maxx website was moderately accurate about  linkages. (I’d love to revise some of the maxx algorithms – I can out-perform it for both ‘convienience’ and ‘quickness’).

I wasn’t alone. On the buses I use, patronage has been going up massively in the last 6 months. Where there were nearly empty buses, they are now half full. Where they were half full, they are now full, and where they were full there isn’t standing room any more. More motorways in Auckland simply make little economic sense, we need a better public transport system. It’d cost less, be more flexible over the long term, and generally free up our existing roads for the transport of goods and services.

Of course our minister of transport Joyce doesn’t see it that way. To me, the question arrives is where have those anonymous donations to the national party coffers come from? Road construction and suburb developer companies perhaps?

I had a look at my available bus routes this morning. I could have gotten buses to work. It would have involved 3 buses and taken at  least 80 minutes (if I was lucky) compared to my usual 30-40 minutes. I took a taxi because the cost and aggravation of driving and parking was greater than the taxi fares.

7 comments on “Infratil / NZ Bus striking for more profits ”

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  1. John Dalley 1
    8 October 2009 at 10:30 am

    I hope that the ARC/ARTA/COUNCILS get of there collective butts and force NZ Bus to sort their act out.

  2. the sprout 2
    8 October 2009 at 10:36 am

    i heard Mike Lee this morning saying NZ Bus should be fined for the non-provision of services and cost to the Auckland economy.
    sounds like a fair idea to me.

  3. Draco T Bastard 3
    8 October 2009 at 1:20 pm

    More motorways in Auckland simply make little economic sense, we need a better public transport system. It’d cost less, be more flexible over the long term, and generally free up our existing roads for the transport of goods and services.

    Of course our minister of transport Joyce doesn’t see it that way.

    Of course he doesn’t – if you remove cars from the roads the cross subsidies that allow road transport to be economic will disappear and he won’t get all those $$$ from the Road Transport Forum.

  4. jarbury 4
    8 October 2009 at 6:39 pm

    ARTA are saying they’ll withhold around $160,000 worth of subsidies for each day that NZ Bus does not operate its services.

    I agree on the Joyce issue, the guy is seriously out of touch with reality when it comes to his roads fetishism. The Road Transport Forum must be paying him some seriously big dollars for the crap he’s peddling.

  5. Swampy 5
    8 October 2009 at 10:28 pm

    Are NZBus locked into existing contract prices with ARTA for the routes they operate.

    And then would a possible resolution be that the pay is agreed to at a certain rate until those service contracts expire, then negotiate new rates for future contracts should they win the next tender round.

    Because I think this dispute is about a lot more than pay. It is about collective contracts and I believe that it is in a large part about the union wanting to dictate the terms of a new collective contract. It seems to be about a lot more than just pay rates and it has been dragging on for a long time.

    When you have a situation where a union is prepared to drag out contract negotiations for five months then there is some ulterior motive going on.

    • IrishBill 5.1
      8 October 2009 at 10:45 pm

      By “a union” I assume you mean the 900 workers who are union members and who vote on the claims, who vote on who of their peers is on the bargaining team, who vote on whether to accept or reject the offers from the company, who vote on whether to take industrial action and, if so, who vote on what industrial action to take?

      What ulterior motive do you think these 900 workers have? I’d really like to know.

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