Things are going wrong again with bus transport in West Brabant. After almost a year of strikes, bus drivers received better working conditions at the beginning of last year. In addition to the 15 percent pay increase, they would now also receive an extra ten minutes’ break. Now that the new timetable in West Brabant came into effect on Sunday, little seems to be left of that second important victory. To the anger of the FNV union and bus drivers.
It works like this: with the start of the new timetable, the disembarkation time that bus drivers are given to, for example, park the bus properly afterwards and store their belongings in their locker, has been shortened. Drivers now have to do this on their own time, unpaid. They actually lose all or part of the extra break they have fought for at the end of their shift.
“Cost savings only increase our workload.”
“They want us to do more and more in our own time,” says Sooi van Weegberg. He is a bus driver and also active at FNV Regional Transport in Brabant. “Cost savings are beneficial for them, but it only puts more work pressure on us.” According to him, Arriva wants to recoup the results of the collective labor agreement negotiations in this way.
In December, the bus driver told the Provincial Council about the high workload he and his colleagues experience. There he already expressed his fear of what is happening now. “We already saw it happen in other regions and there is now a hopeless row between Arriva and the unions.”
“It is not without reason that the strike took so long.”
Marijn van der Gaag of the national department of FNV Regional Transport also sees that the workload in regional transport is getting worse: “It is not without reason that there has been such a long strike. Absenteeism is high, the work is extremely irregular and there are few breaks left. You now see that a new timetable is being used to squeeze some money out of the drivers.”
He also sees this in the timetables. “No time has been scheduled at all to let travelers get in and out. As a result, drivers are constantly driving behind the timetable. They want to take people from A to B in a pleasant way, but if you are always ten minutes late, there is little more pleasant.”
“I see retired colleagues in their 70s driving.”
Arriva is too concerned with saving money and not enough with recruiting new bus drivers, according to bus driver Van Weegberg. “The staff shortages are still enormous, resulting in a high workload. I see retired colleagues in their seventies riding the bus as an emergency solution. It’s getting out of hand.”
The Works Council (OR) says that it has never been approved that the exit time will now be your own time. This is required by law. But even if the Works Council and the unions go to court and win their case, the workload remains enormous. “It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” says trade unionist Van der Gaag. “They’ll never admit it, but it’s always about money.”
“It’s yet another punch in the stomach for drivers.”
The bus driver still sees a new strike. “The jug is submerged in water until it bursts,” he says. He hopes that the province will make itself heard more. “As the client, the province determines whose buses are allowed to drive. It can choose to take working conditions into account in that choice.”
SP Staten member Oscar van Raak is also not happy. “It is a disguised cutback and it is yet another punch in the stomach for bus drivers. It is unacceptable that this happens without the permission of the Works Council. The province should at least discourage this behavior.” He believes that the province should speak to Arriva about this.
Van Raak also wants working conditions to be taken into account from now on when allocating regional transport. “We are now often told that the province is not responsible for this. That has to change. If we do nothing, we have to wonder how we can continue to maintain public transport, a basic facility.”
When asked for a response, Arriva only stated that drivers do indeed get a ten-minute break according to the collective labor agreement. According to the company, ‘new agreements have been made’ regarding the disembarkation times.
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Previously, bus drivers told their stories about difficult working conditions among Members of Parliament in the Provincial Council