Rolling bus strikes to start in Auckland tomorrow after relations between drivers and company break down

Rolling bus strikes will begin from Wednesday in Auckland after contract negotiations with NZ Bus and its drivers broke down. Photo / File

Drivers from NZ Bus say rolling strikes will begin tomorrow after the company declined to meet them for bargaining over pay and conditions on Monday.

About 250 drivers held a stopwork meeting early this morning, disrupting 37 bus services across the city till 8am.

They have now agreed to continue industrial action from Wednesday morning, First Union said today.

It's not yet clear which bus routes will be affected.

NZ Bus had offered 68 cents to take hourly pay rate to $22.75, the unions say. Among the changes sought, they want a further 25c to take the hourly rate to $23.

But NZ Bus says it has offered to increase drivers' hourly rates up to $24 by January 2022 - an increase of over 8 per cent. It says drivers' hourly rates are already the highest in Auckland.

"Unfortunately, we have made very little progress with the company since they suspended drivers en masse last December," First Union spokesman Jared Abbott said.

Abbott claimed NZ Bus' current offer contained "clawbacks" that would weaken existing terms and conditions and reduce the maximum amount any future bus driver could earn, making them the second lowest-paying operator in Auckland.

Drivers currently work shifts of up to 14 hours with four unpaid hours in the middle of the shift, Abbott told the Herald.

The union wants unpaid hours cut to three at most, and an added half hour paid time
off.

Abbott said drivers worked "incredibly hard" and deserved to earn more than what was effectively minimum wage once unpaid gaps in their schedules were factored in.

"Auckland councillors committed to resolving the dispute following the company's mass suspension of drivers last year, but NZ Bus themselves need to be realistic and truthful about their ability to settle this dispute fairly with their drivers."

March Madness - the busiest month of Auckland's traffic calendar - got off to a trouble-free start yesterday morning with nothing out of the ordinary on the city's roads and public transport.

Monday officially marks the first day of the semester for 2020, and it comes after construction on the City Rail Link (CRL) closed the major city intersection of Wellesley St West and Albert St.

This intersection closure is nothing new for Aucklanders in 2020, who are in the thick of 63 separate road work disruptions to CBD streets this year.

Wellesley St West, in particular, acts as the dividing border between Auckland University and AUT University in the city, and the 30 bus routes travelling the east-west route have been diverted around several CBD blocks.