Bus 157 to Schagen does run. Bus 166 to Bergen does not. But that may soon be different. The strike in regional transport, Wednesday in North Holland and Utrecht, makes waiting a lottery at Alkmaar station. Is the bus coming or not?
“Half of the 101 journeys we would drive today are out,” says Fred Redlich, executive member of the FNV trade union. In Hoorn it was about a quarter. A day earlier, on Tuesday, 50 to 60 percent of the drivers in Flevoland, South Holland and Zeeland went on strike. On Thursday, regional transport in North Brabant and Limburg will cease, Friday in the North of the Netherlands; On September 16, a nationwide strike in regional transport will follow.
There will be no strikes with urban transport in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Employees and employers of GVB (Amsterdam), RET (Rotterdam) and HTM (The Hague) agreed a new collective labor agreement this spring.
For Fred Redlich, a tall man with short gray hair and glasses, the strike day started early. Wednesday morning at four o’clock he was already registering striking colleagues at the depot. First in the pouring rain, later in the radiant sun. Redlich has been a bus driver for the regional transport company Connexxion, owned by the French Transdev, for twelve years.
Read alsoTrain traffic will be stopped again on Friday due to national strike
On Wednesday it looks like a strike as usual: coffee, sandwiches, a dozen chatting colleagues. The FNV has set up a red party tent in front of the depot in Alkmaar, on the provincial road to Den Helder. Many buses are stationary there, at the charging stations. “80 percent of our buses are electric,” says Redlich. But sometimes a bus leaves for the station, a mile away. “A colleague who is not a member of the union. Or from the CNV.”
Price compensation
In contrast to the previous NS strikes, the unions in regional transport are not acting at the same time. The 1,300 CNV members – out of 12,000 employees in regional transport – did not strike. In March, the CNV members approved the employers’ proposal by a two-thirds majority. FNV Streekvervoer has 6,000 members.
The new Collective Labor Agreement for Public Transport that the CNV has signed will run from 1 June. Older employees can make use of a scheme to retire up to two years earlier. All employees will receive a one-off payment of 1,200 euros and 2.8 percent more wages as of 1 July.
Insufficient, according to FNV. The union wants, among other things, that employers compensate staff for the high inflation. The FNV has been campaigning for several months. “Without price compensation, it doesn’t matter what I do,” Redlich expresses the feeling of colleagues. “People have nothing to lose anymore. If you don’t fight for your job now, when will you?”
As with the railways, the FNV wants employers to do more to reduce work pressure. “It’s huge,” Redlich says. “As a result, absenteeism due to illness is high, and the shortage of people is increasing. We were unable to drive 11 of the 101 rides today. There are not enough drivers.”
Immediate delay
In the past, they always had a few minutes’ break at the station between rides, Redlich says. “You could stretch your legs, go to the toilet. Now the timetable is so tight that you actually have to leave immediately with your next bus. There is no more air in the grille. If the bridge is open or there is an accident, you are immediately delayed. The result: grumbling passengers, especially in the cold or rain.”
The carriers want the drivers to work even more flexibly. “You have to work longer, start earlier or later,” says Redlich. “But the stretch is out. The battery is empty.”
It is not just the aftermath of the pandemic, according to Redlich, why transport companies in the Netherlands – all foreign-owned by the way – are paying so much attention to costs. He also points to the negative impact of public procurement. This is how it works: a public transport company can register for a concession, for example bus transport in Noord-Holland-Noord. This will be provided by Connexxion until 2028. A new tender will then follow. Redlich: “In general, the cheapest provider wins in tenders. He will then try to cut costs as much as possible. They have to take over the buses, those costs are fixed. That leaves mainly the wage costs.” This does not apply to urban transport; the municipalities own it.
Another way to cut costs is to eliminate unprofitable lines. Carriers have been saying for some time that without government support their services would have to shrink by 20 to 30 percent. The cabinet does give them an ‘availability allowance’, but they think the support from 1 January is too little.
“The ‘thin’ lines in the evening are deleted first,” says Redlich. “That has major consequences for the rest of the timetable. If you know that your bus no longer runs late at night, after a night at the theater in the city, then you don’t take the bus on the way there either. So we end up in a downward spiral.”
The FNV member refers to bus transport on Texel. There, Connexxion only runs a bus from the ferry port in ‘t Horntje past (and not through) Den Burg to De Koog. “The smaller villages are no longer served. Those people should come to the bus instead of the other way around.”
Or take line 10, from Alkmaar to the nearby village of Sint Pancras. That connection was replaced by a neighborhood bus – manned by volunteers – because, according to Connexxion, insufficient passengers were using the bus. Spreadsheet managers, grumbles Redlich. “They just look at the numbers. For example, they lack the local knowledge that the main road in Sint Pancras was open for two years due to sewer work.”