Auckland bus strike: 100 drivers suspended with no pay until Christmas Eve
Saturday, 7 December 2019
'No work, no pay' is the message to striking Auckland bus drivers, with about 100 suspended on Saturday morning.
One hundred more are expected to be suspended before the day is out for refusing to collect fares from passengers, with hundreds more suspensions due on Monday morning.
Suspensions have to be issued individually, First Union's Jared Abbott said, so as drivers turned up for work they were being told to go home.
Cancellations to services operated by NZ Bus started on Saturday morning as a result of ongoing strike action.
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* Auckland buses to provide free fares during strike action**
Abbott said the suspensions had 'rarked people up'.
Workers were 'generally angry,' and the loss of pay meant 'there will be people struggling', he said.
NZ Bus announced it would be cancelling services and suspending drivers on Friday. It came after a new wage deal to try to finalise a new collective agreement with First Union and Tramways members was not accepted.
Abbott said there was 'no real notice' of the suspensions, which meant they weren't able to talk to their members about how they wanted to proceed with strike action.
On Saturday, NZ Bus employees were picketing outside the depots of other bus companies that continued to operate, Abbott said, which could cause disruption to services still operating.
Mark Hannan, from Auckland Transport, said there had been pickets at some depots in south Auckland but police had moved them on.
'Buses are generally out on the road so little effect on services,' he said.
Announcing the cancellations, NZ Bus said it could not afford to operate its buses with drivers refusing to collect fares and, as a consequence, drivers had been suspended.
It said it remained 'absolutely committed' to getting back around the table to fix the situation as soon as possible.
'We encourage the unions to come back to the negotiation table and lift the actions so we can recommence services,' it said.
Abbott said it was difficult to tell how long the dispute would run for, but they would like it to finish 'today'.
Striking drivers are pushing to shorten the span of their working day from 14 to 12 hours, in addition to a pay rise.
Both disputes are about not only a pay rise, but also the long split-shift working days which the unions said were a consequence of Government legislation and rules.
The cancellations escalated the dispute as NZ Bus will now face penalties imposed by AT, for failing to run services according to the timetable.
The company operates some of AT's busiest routes along Dominion, Sandringham, Mt Eden and Manukau Rds, as well as other routes across the wider Auckland region and the LINK services.
Bus services operated by companies other than NZ Bus will continue as scheduled, along with train and ferry services.
Impacted NZ Bus services include school buses, CityLink, InnerLink, OuterLink and TāmakiLink services. Also affected are 14T, 14W, 18, 20, 22A, 22N, 22R, 24R, 24W, 25B, 25L, 27T, 27W, 27H, 30, 68, 75, 82, 101, 105, 106, 110, 122, 125, 125X, 128, 129, 162, 252, 253, 221X, 223X, 243X, 248X, 295, 321, 650, 670, 751, 755, 762, 774, 775, 781, 80, 802, 806, 807, 814, 842, 843, 871, 923, 924.