Report from Dublin Busworkers Anti privatisation Public Forum last night

by Dermot Sreenan - WSM Thu Jul 24, 2003 17:08

"LIGHT UP THE SKY"

Myself and Chekov attended the bus workers meeting last night in Liberty hall. This is one of a series of meetings where the workers are out to try and explain their side of the story with the upcoming threat of privatisation being faced by them. There was a good attendance of people at the meeting well in excess of a hundred, I would estimate. The crowd consisted of bus workers, lefties, and concerned citizens as well as well known trade union activists. The meeting was chaired by Eoin Mc Cormack of the bus workers action group.

There were three speakers on the platform. First up to speak was Bill McCaffrey (worker Director) SIPTU. His excellent speech dealt with the carnage of the discredited UK rail model for privatisation. He said this fight was one against the "economic orthodoxy and intellectual gutlessness" of the present right wing government who consistently run away from any debate on the issue. Brennan is busy spinning a web off lies and deceit about the issue and it being backed up by the "nest of right wing ideologues in the cabinet". At the moment the plan is to break Dublin bus up into 4 neat parts. Working conditions are only guaranteed to remain the same for the first 12 months of the new regime. The lie that this will in some way save money was dealt with. In London the subsidies have increased to £575 M PA. The same has happened in Copenhagen, another shining example held up by the minister. Subsidies have increased to EUR124 M from previously being EUR100 and passengers have decreased.

Gombeen Brennan has now switched to London as his prima facia example. There are 7 operators working there. Usually this means that there are only two bids for certain routes or in some cases only a sole bid is entered. This puts paid to the myth of increased competition. Because of poor pay and conditions this has led to problems with certain routes being cancelled. Dublin Bus by comparison had a consultancy firm investigate it and it came back with two essential problems. 1. Inadequate Funding from Government 2. Traffic congestion. McCaffrey finished off by saying that the ideology of putting profit before people had to be vigorously challenged. In 1913 William Murphy that little turd tried to smash the union of the ITGWU, now Brennan is at the same game and we cannot let him win.

The next speaker was Gerry Charles from the National Bus and Rail workers union. (worker director) He went on to outline the disaster that privatisation had brought on the transport systems in London and Copenhagen. The subsidies for transport in London is expected to rise to a staggering £1Billion Stg in the next six years. Low pay and conditions had led to cancellations of 10 to 15% off buses. A driver gets £16 - £18 K per annum and most have to do overtime to meet the cost of living in that city. 20 -25% turnover of staff and this is the shining example that Brennan wants to implement. Dublin Bus by comparison made a profit of EUR3.4M last year. A further EUR1.8M was lost due to fares being rounded down during the euro change over. A new fleet of buses was bought at the same time. There has been a 3% increase in passengers. A firm of consultants stated that it was one of the highest most efficient transport companies in Europe and even the Danish are now admitting that their experiment with privatisation has not being a success and they are looking at Dublin bus as an example of how it should be done.

Finally Mick O'Reilly of the ATGWU - title Senior Industrial Organiser - spoke. Firstly he congratulated the union on the no fares day and said it was one of the "greatest pieces of imaginative trade unionism" and he was disgusted that it was met with such a mealy mouthed response in the media. He stated that this battle would be won by a combination of factors, political, industrial, and propaganda. He said that it was ironic that Fianna Fail who had developed the State companies in the 1930's are now so intent on wrecking them by blindly copying the cul de sac of privatisation that had been implemented across the Irish sea. Dublin Bus had survived despite getting the lowest level of public funding of all public sector transport companies in the EU. In a time when Financial institutions had received tax cuts from 38% to 12% the public services had been starved of money. The proposed break up of Aer Rianta is another case of the idiocy of this government and the obsession they have with creating opportunities for their rich friends to make yet more money. Mick then used this opportunity to talk about the partnership agreements that have been in existence for 15 years between Unions and the government. Although he is on record as being opposed to them he said that now is the time to go back to this right wing cabinet and say that all agreements are off. Again Bertie Ahern was on record as saying that he was against privitisation. So then stop it from happening. Effectively with Mick's powerful delivery I read this as a declaration of war on the governments intentions. WE will Fight them and "we will light up the sky because we are right". I couldn't have agreed more.

The questions focussed on the importance of action. The feeling from workers was that the time for talking was over, as one worker said there has to be give and take in talks and so why were the officials talking to the government as they had nothing left to give! Des Derwin spoke about the need to link up the fights in Aer Rianta with the Bus workers. The Path got up as a member of RTS and congratulated the bus workers on their imaginative action on no fares day. A train driver gave a brilliant history of the doomed headstones that represented previous attempts at privatisation of CIE. A guy whose father was a train driver and whose da was a conductor came back to Ireland after being away for the boom (US & OZ) and he tore into the PD policy of this government and said that it was globalisation plain and simple and that it hadn't worked only to make the rich man richer. A Spartacist got up and in a very thick teutonic accent managed to take offence at the fact that someone had dared to criticize the great transport system of Mother Russia (he had himself been to Moscow and could tell for a fact the smooth efficient system ran ze workers). He also managed to slag off the Socialist Party and the SWP in his five minutes barely comprehensible speech. Of course Chekov, Kevin and myself couldn't stop giggling as he wound himself up into a conniption. Most people would've gone home with this clown as a classic caricature in their head of what the left is like. Brid Smith spoke for the SWP and said that it was important to link this fight with the struggle against the bin tax and that meeting should happen in local communities so that the bus workers got to explain their side of the story.

Overall I felt that this was a good meeting. The mood amongst the workers is that the fight is on. The mood from people is that this is a battle ground where we take this right wing government on. There was an element of the meeting where praise of the achievements of Dublin bus workers overshadowed the obvious problems that exist. One speaker used the slogan “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Both myself and Chekov felt that it would be better to concentrate on the lack of investment and the congestion, rather than to claim that Dublin bus needed no changes. Given the fact that many people are frustrated with Dublin’s public transport system, it would tend to reinforce the perception that the workers are ‘luddites’ and simply against change, if they push the line that the bus system works perfectly. We felt that the busworkers should also address some of the problems with the current system in their action, so that this becomes a progressive fight rather than just a defensive one. A real transport plan has to be made for this country and more specifically for this city for the sake of all our futures. It's up to all of us to get involved and ensure that we save Dublin bus from Becoming another headstone on the autobaann to ruling class making more money from the people's assets.

PS> The busworkers have leaflets which are available for distribution in local areas and they encourage people to organise meetings in their areas to explain the issues. The unions should have no problem with providing speakers and drivers on local routes may help publicse them. The busworkers action group can be contacted at: [email protected]

Upcoming action days: No fares day August Strike 1 one day 14th September Strike 2 One day October Strike 3 Two days in November.

by Sean Keegan Thu Jul 24, 2003 18:13

For years CIE/Dublin Bus had a lousy and expensive service to the airport. On one occasion I remember seeing a driver refusing a 20 pound note from a person who had just arrived in Ireland. This driver sent the foreign visitor (who scarcely understood what the "problem" was) back into the terminal to get change before he would let him on the bus. That's the kind of lousy service that the monopoly gave the customer.
Then the Blue Bus arrived. Suddenly there was competition. Dublin Bus dropped their fares, and opened up new routes to the airport.
Consumers benefitted.

We could mention a dozen other examples. How about the DART workers who went on strike for extra money before they would agree to drive the trains to one extra station (Greystones). No, it's time to break all these monopolies.

by f Thu Jul 24, 2003 18:23

Except for the fact that Brennan's proposal's won't be breaking any monopolies. What will happen is that a load of small monopolies on individual routes will be given to profit-driven companies, and Dublin Bus will be left with the underused routes. Then, when Dublin Bus posts a massive loss in a year or two because it's had all it's money-making routes taken from it, and can't subsidise the other ones, everyone will be able to say "See, Dublin Bus isn't viable! Good job we privatised the buses". In the meantime, everyone will have to drive if they're not going somewhere that makes money for the bus company.

by j.p. Thu Jul 24, 2003 20:59

no im not interested in defecting to you however.

by Phuq Hedd Thu Jul 24, 2003 21:37

The privatisation of public transport has been a disaster whereever it has been implemented and so called "private transport" relies upon massive subsidies. This has been demonstrated no where more obviously than with the private motor car which sucks up taxes in road construction, petrol subsidies, health care and lost work hours due to traffic jams.

Dublin Bus as ideally placed to solve the congestion problem of our capitol by increasing its number of employees to service a larger number of routes on dedicated bus-only lanes.

This will provide the carrot of regular, reliable transport at peak hours and the stick of having to sit a traffic jam while a bus full of happy passengers sails by. (Bringing back conductors would be a good move as well -- they provided a valuable role in assisting passengers onto the bus more quickly than the current swarming throngs and were able to help out oul'wans with their shopping trolleys or disabled passengers).

It is great to see the Dublin Bus workers receiving so much support for their struggle and it would be great if they can push not only for the retention of immediate conditions but for their improvement: if nothing else pushing for more demands means that there's more leeway at the bargaining table.

Good luck to them.

by Dermot Thu Jul 24, 2003 22:08 the_meaning_of_it_all at yahoo dot co dot uk

Just a trivial observation on "argument by anecdote":
Sean, are you familiar with the "no change" rule on the buses, its been in for a good few years now. (Though perhaps you're not a regular bus rider...) If the driver HAD accepted the 20 he would have had to take the whole thing, and the tourist would have had to go claim their change at the bus office later. What a way to spend your holiday, eh-queueing at the Dublin Bus office?

by Seáinín Sun Jul 27, 2003 02:32

Kick the troublemakers out and give the jobs to people who'll appreciate them. The rudeness and arrogance of Dublin Bus staff is beyond belief.

by mr. aggro Sun Jul 27, 2003 12:51

Damn right Shauneen .....

Kick them out and give the jobs to someone who'll appreciate them ... preferably low-paid slave-workers who speak pidgin English .....

And while we're at it how about taking the land from all those arrogant small farmers down the west milking the Brussels grants and contributing nothing to the common good ... a bunch of lazy over-privileged moaners --- getting their money for nothing while others have to work for it ....

Plenty of land-hungry industrious foreigners who would be glad of a few acres and put it to better use than its present subsidised "occupiers" ....

I think that Art. 43.2.2 of the Constitution would support such measures:
"The State, accordingly, may as occasion requires delimit by law the exercise of the said rights with a view to reconciling their exercise with the exigencies of the common good."

by Terry Tue Jul 29, 2003 15:57

The people who have made comments like 'sack them all' or 'kick them all out' are simply repeating the right wing reactionary comments by various pundits in the media and the press. Are you not capable of thinking for yourselves or do you just carry on parrot-like? If the same press said 'Assault bus drivers', would you do it or at least stand idly by while someone else did? The worst of all this is that you are simply being used by the system and their right wing cheerleaders/commentators. The system needs people that react to such rhetoric but make no effort to think. That is how whole countries go to war and support dictatorships, because they rely on a sufficiently large number of people like yous, who just react to whatever is prompted.

I will not refute those largely ignorant heckles, since they have already been satisfactorily replied to above by others.