The Wellington Tramways and Public Passenger Transport Employees Union for 20 years gallantly held the line in protecting employment conditions for bus drivers in the region. Where other unions drivers’ unions were taken out in the late 1980’s after Richard Prebble and the 4th Labour Government deregulated the public transport sector and forced councils to contract out the service. Others soon folded under pressure or sold out their conditions for one-off payments or a few more cents an hour.
In my time as a driver and branch president, we continued to preserve and improve employment conditions. Attempts to break the union by bringing in a flat rate contract and changing shifts to reduce drivers hours. The Tramways union defeated this, and improved wages and conditions at the two other bus companies contracted to the Greater Wellington Regional Council to deliver public transport services. The union did well, but ultimately we were always playing a game of defence. Competitive tendering remained the Government policy and the National Government of 2008 to 2017 Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM) supported the continued competitive tendering structure. This model meant bus companies won tenders by bidding low, and the only way they had to reduce costs was to compromise on health and safety or reduce bus drivers pay and conditions.
Above: The Thank You Driver campaign was launched in 2017 to try and protect Wellington drivers jobs and work conditions after the council re-tendered the bus routes.
In 2016 Greater Wellington Regional Council voted to get rid of the city’s trolley bus network. As one of the last remaining southern hemisphere trolley bus networks, it was a sad day for transport enthusiasts. Much worse, trolleybuses were an environmentally friendly alternative to diesel and the council’s proposed clean energy alternatives were decidedly dirtier. But the clear motivation behind this decision was to break the monopoly of Wellington City Transport, and thus the Tramways Union so to drive down wages and conditions. This project was led by my early political nemesis and former MP Paul Swain. By this stage, he had been elected to the Regional Council, a local authority with a history of disappointing Wellington bus drivers. Swain had also been a bus driver and member of the union in the 1970’s, so had full knowledge of what the consequences of his actions would be.
Sure to form, Paul Swain along with Regional Council Chair and another former Labour MP Fran Wilde proposed tearing down the trolleybus wire and increasing the city’s carbon emission. This was to then promptly followed by re-tendering all the bus routes having redesigned all the bus network so that bus companies could then compete over routes and undercut each other. At one council meeting in mid-2016 Swain was questioned about the possibility of protecting drivers jobs and employment conditions. After a few questions, he lost patience, slammed in hand on the table and ended the meeting. This was the extent to which Swain and the Greater Wellington Regional Council considered supporting bus drivers during this process.
By this time I was working at the PSA and was actively looking towards moving to the UK. We had founded Piko Consulting and were starting to run successful campaigns in New Zealand. In early 2017 the Tramways Union contacted us about helping them. They knew things were looking bad with the tendering, and drivers stood to lose their jobs and take significant pay cuts if they had to go to a new employer.
Piko helped the Tramways Union launch the Thank You Bus Driver campaign to pressure the council to protect drivers’ jobs and working conditions. In June 2017 drivers and supporters of the campaign attended a Greater Wellington council meeting demanding that they support the drivers. By this time Chris Laidlaw another former NZ Labour MP, had replaced Fran Wilde as the Greater Wellington Regional Council Chair. The below recording was made by me at this meeting:
This promise would ultimately be broken a year later. In 2017 the Thank You Driver Campaign gained momentum and became an issue during the 2017 General Election with Wellington MP’s and candidates endorsing it. Whilst I was happy this was happening; I knew that in all likelihood the drivers would end up taking a hit.
Wellington City Transport (Go Wellington) retained some of the Wellington City contracts, and the pay and conditions remained largely unchanged. However, they lost a significant number of routes. The Tramways Union with support from the Council of Trade Unions (the NZ union peak body) tried to negotiate with the new contractor, who for months played games and refused to engage with the union. Despite his promises in the above clip, Chris Laidlaw refused to help.
In late 2017 the incoming Labour Government made changes to the PTOM contracting rules. But it was too late for Wellington, where the Regional Council contracts had already been set.
In mid-2018 the change over happened. Many of the drivers who’d been around a while and were nearing retirement chose to take the redundancy payment. The Union had to take legal action to ensure these long-serving drivers got their entitlement, but eventually were successful. In the tragic case of my former colleague and good friend Chris Morley, he died of cancer just a few days after the payment came through. Chris was vice president of the union and carried the weight of the world on his shoulders trying to save his members jobs. I spoke to him a few days before he died and he told me the stress of the last couple of years had likely contributed to him getting cancer.
For those who went over to the new company, they faced a $200 a week pay cut, fewer protections regarding hours of work and rosters and generally much worse employment conditions. As many drivers quit, the new company couldn’t run its services. Thousands of passengers were left stranded on new bus routes they were promised would be more efficient. Wellington had one of the highest levels of public transport use in the country, the Regional Council’s actions destroyed this overnight. An inferior public transport system, worse pay and conditions for drivers and buses that now were emitting more carbon. Local Government decision making at its finest.
Many of the regional councillors responsible didn’t stand again in the 2019 local government elections, realising that after what they had done re-election was less than likely. But the damage had been done. Whilst things have settled down somewhat over the last two years the service is not what it was. Turnover of bus drivers has increased, and the reliability of the service remains much lower than it was prior to 2018.
The Tramways Union continues to organise drivers in the Wellington Region. The Thank You Driver campaign will continue to call for drivers pay and conditions to be restored to their pre-2018 levels. The last few years have not been easy for drivers, but the Wellington Tramways Union continues to be the voice of these workers, as it has been since it founded in 1908.
They destroyed the routes in the eastern suburbs – made all the routes longer (and so slower) or made them multiple trips. People in my suburb who used to work at the hospital could get there on one bus ride (old 18) then they changed it so people had to swap buses twice to get there – a crow's fly distance of less than 4 km. I told them the absurdity of that during their consultation phase but it was only about 6 months after the debacle came in that they re-instated the service.
There has been a huge cost to users (time/inconvenience), a huge cost to drivers (packed buses/grumpy passengers/lower wages) and a huge cost to the WCC (who had to build the hubs/change the roading layout) on the changes and I suspect very little financial gain for the GWRC.
What was the Swain's motivation? A dislike of overhead wires? Shares in a bus company?
Yes disgraceful.
remembering Chris Morley who fought so hard to retain the trolleys and maintain drivers conditions of work. Passed away almost two years ago.
thanks for the article Nick. Shame on Swan et al
Laidlaw in particular deserved public punishment, not allowed to slink off with no consequences. Silly old shithead.
The Flyer service used to be really useful. Initially from Upper Hutt to the airport then just from Lower Hutt to the airport. It meant many people did not need to take their car to the city, or to the airport. It was frequent and the schedules were on the real-time screens.
Because of shambolic disagreement between councils and the bus operator, it was not able to take the snapper card and schedules were taken off the screens. So people would be waiting at stops having no idea if or when a Flyer would be coming. Driver shortages did not help, meaning random cancellations.
With lockdown and now less flights it is not running and possibly will not again as the councils and operator can't seem to sort it out. It was such a useful service. We are not even kept informed about what is happening.
I'm fairly sure the flyer contract was up for retender this year- which may be where it has vanished to.
It was a useful service – when it came in I do remember Hutt Valley residents being very pleased as they could simply catch a cab to the nearest bus top not all the way to the airport (or face having to drag luggage on and off commuter services not really designed for that.)
A critical issue for the Bus redisorganisation were the requirements set by Government (Gerry Brownlee signed them as Minister), that effectively required
* the services to be put to tender
* the basis of selection was to be lowest cost – nothing else
* bidders were entitled to tender for all or any part of the services (this meant that we now have four companies trying to run a "coordinated" service)
Laidlaw and other Regional Councillors had no option but to obey the law.
Probably the designed result. After all, private business can't actually compete with efficient public service.
So, who's benefited from all this destruction of an efficient public service?
Amazing that Paul Swain had been a bus driver and would act against them maintaining reasonable conditions. It seems that by the end of the 70's 'The Working Man and Woman' was infra dig, along with most physical jobs whether they involved shovels or not!
So going Neolib for the Labour Party middle-class majority was only moving forward from old-fashioned work sectors at the end of the day. The Wellington Union deserves every accolade for being the thinking man's, and woman's no doubt, watchdog and negotiator.
All this heady economic stuff being imparted by Treasury and Those In The Know about international markets and finance stuff, and that this was new wave stuff as Tony Blair* was espousing, just went to the heads of Labour in NZ, virtual agricultural peasants. (When doing a Polytechnic refresher course that involved Business and Economics 101, our Chinese tutor advised us, with graphs, that no mainly agricultural economy ever gained a firm footing in the ranks of First World countries). But we were given a back door; wipe all constraints and lead the world.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism and said: "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice. … Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly".
Then there was the Third Position – did Tony know whether he was a missionary or a minion?
* Third Position – Wikipedia
Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc. … These groups emphasize opposition to both communism and capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position
"Many of the regional councillors responsible didn’t stand again in the 2019 local government elections, realising that after what they had done re-election was less than likely."
I'd say more like ………. " realising that after what they had done re-election was near " bloody impossible.
But Wellington City Council is not blameless in all of this by any means. We were fed a load of shit re the trolley bus infrastructure as well. Even IF the Regional Council were warned against a big bang implementation with hub points, there was enough serviceable infrastructure to have implemented a trolley shuttle between various hub points. (For example Rail-Courtenay-Hospital- Kilbirnie – and probably even further afield). WCC (Wgtn CC Ltd couldn't tear it down fast enough).
Ahh…local knowledge…nice one OWT, to discover the facts is usually helpful in solving a problem.
I know the Wellington landscape well, and one might think public transport could be sorted for the good of all, but really what a self inflicted mess from senior people that should be able to act much more responsibly.
Maximum thanks to you Nick, and all the drivers that stayed true over the years, for exposing the maggoty effect of neo liberalism in social infrastructure settings–where every human activity imaginable is reduced to a transaction.
Ditto thanks to Nick. Actually I was thinking how pertinent this morning's Kim Hill/Anand Giridharadas interview is to the way local gummint now operates.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018754514/anand-giridharadas-beware-of-billionaire-do-gooders
Swain always was a bit of a dickhead. I think I might have started driving buses and being a 'gripman' for a few short days/weeks shortly before him. (The old cable car got dealt to). It was popular with students/actors/artists/musicians at the time as a means of having a reasonable earn – that and being a postie. Tollich and Stubbs, and Pat Kelly did some good work back then.
Seems to me that the thing the architects of this current mess didn't bother with was to ask people (I think the term is ACTUAL "stakeholders") what they wanted. Basic stuff like where it was people were travelling from and to unimpeded by bus changes, OR the drivers themselves who were warning before implementation the thing was going to be a fiasco.
Great summary Nick
That is a massive tragedy, and thankyou Nick for showing the multiple ways the National government and the WRC wrecked transport and wrecked lives.