Luas drivers vote to allow lower pay for new recruits

SIPTU members have agreed to lower starting pay for the 33 new Luas drivers who will be recruited by Transdev to operate trams on the extended network next year.

These so-called ‘yellow-pack’ starter rates were their main objection when the drivers voted by 98% to reject a pay proposal from the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

This weekend they voted by a two-to-one majority to have colleagues start on lower pay scales that, only last month, Siptu officials said were unfair and discriminatory.

In March, Luas drivers objected strongly to plans to employ 30 new entrants on rates reduced by 10%.

Transdev management argued that such a two-tier pay structure was permitted under a 2010 deal with Siptu. It said newly recruited drivers would still earn €32,000 and this would be higher than any such driver in any light-rail system in Europe.

The Siptu members have not secured the increase in their annual bonus from 6.5% to 10%; company-paid private health insurance cover; and a doubling of the company pension contributions, from 5% to 10% of earnings. Overall they have secured less than onequarter of what they were seeking at the beginning of the work stoppages.

Luas drivers have not been offered more than their nondriver colleagues who signed up to a 13.1% pay deal in April. The drivers have been offered a similar settlement at between 12.5% and 18.3% – over a 15-month longer period so they are no better off. Transdev stuck to its policy that the more disruption and longer the strikes, the less drivers would achieve in the end.

The sophisticated Labour Court recommendation was designed to avoid a spate of knock-on strikes in Dublin Bus, Iarnród Éireann and Bus Éireann whose drivers claimed that the Luas employees were being offered a 25% pay rise. The reality is approximately 3% a year – some way from the 13% a year rise originally sought when the stoppages started four months ago.

The lower ‘yellow pack’ pay for new entrants will be maintained despite drivers claiming they were fighting on behalf of further recruits.

The deal means that Luas drivers will start work at €32,000 rising after 10 years to €52,000. This is more than many college graduates would earn. This week Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary had said that anyone could learn to drive a Luas tram ‘in two-and-a-half nano-seconds’ and recommended that students be trained to take on the jobs during their summer holidays.

The pay proposal works out at an approximately 3% rise this year and each year until 2019. A 2.5% rise at the start of 2020 and a further 2% in September 2020. The deal runs out in 2020. The five-year operating contract with the National Transport Authority expires in 2019. Work on the extended Luas Cross City project is due to be completed in late 2017.

Nine weeks ago, when all but two of the 172 drivers rejected a pay settlement People Before Profit and the Anti-Austerity Alliance said ‘the massive rejection by Luas drivers of the proposed settlement from the WRC [was] absolutely justified’.

The Labour Court recommendation includes a provision for a review of the lower entry rates after 18 months.

They did not secure increase in bonus