Bus misery to escalate as drivers take action

Auckland bus passengers are in for more misery when work bans by Stagecoach drivers kick in tomorrow, building to strikes from next week.

Four unions representing just under 1000 drivers have issued the bus company with eight notices of industrial action, a move which Stagecoach says is blocking a return to negotiations.

Although strikes will not begin until next Monday, operations director Warren Fowler is alarmed drivers are threatening to pull the plug from tomorrow on the last bus trip of each shift.

This could disrupt 700 trips a day, from afternoon until late at night.

The drivers also intend banning voluntary overtime and will start holding depot stopwork meetings tomorrow, ramping up to a one-day strike next Monday and rolling stoppages the week after that.

Mr Fowler said the first stopwork meeting, tomorrow at Stagecoach's small Panmure depot, should cause little disruption, and would be covered by other areas as long as drivers returned to work afterwards.

But another stopwork on Wednesday - at the much larger Wiri depot - could throw South Auckland bus services into disarray, although the unions are promising that drivers will transport children home from school.

Unionists at the company's northern-most depot, Orewa, will apply a further irritant by refusing to refuel buses there from 2pm each Friday until 8am on Saturday.

A full 24-hour region-wide strike is threatened next Monday, April 4, to be followed by one-day depot-by-depot stoppages from the following Monday, April 11.

These will be the first strikes on Auckland buses for six years.

Mr Fowler said industrial action was the last thing the company wanted. He expressed disappointment on Friday that the unions sent eight strike notices before offering to make themselves available for negotiations over the Easter break.

"We want them to get back [to negotiations] so we can talk sensibly to them, but we can't do that under strike notices."

Combined unions advocate Gary Froggatt said the notices followed 26 weeks of negotiations, and it was up to Stagecoach to approach his team with a new pay deal.

Although the company says an initial 7.6 per cent pay rise in a package totalling 12 per cent over three years is well above the 5 per cent sought by unions in other industries, this is off an hourly base of $13.94.

Mr Froggatt said an offer of $15 in the initial instalment would still be $6.25 below the national average wage, and many drivers had to cope with three to six hours a day of split-shift downtime for a daily allowance of $3.60.

Disruption this week

* Tomorrow: Ban starts on voluntary overtime. Drivers at small Panmure depot to stop work from 11.30am to 2pm for meeting.

* Wednesday: Drivers at big Wiri depot to stop work from 11.30am to 2pm for meeting.

* Friday: Ban on refuelling buses from Orewa depot from 2pm to 8am next day.