NZBustastrophe battle over, but the war isn’t
How do you repair leaky pipes? How do you improve a region’s economic development? How do you solve the city’s traffic congestion? How do you fix a bus driver shortage? If you live in Wellington, the answer is simple – you hire a PR company. With a serious driver shortage and a breakdown in union negotiations, NZ Bus has employed Thompson Lewis, a PR company with links to the 2017 Ardern government, to help them through the NZBustastrophe, which NZ Bus itself created.
When I was a child, Thompson Lewis was a softdrink manufacturer that produced a bland and saccharine creaming soda.
The merchant bankers at First Capital, owner of NZ Bus, will be hoping their PR gurus will have a bit more fizz and bite than their carbonated namesakes.
Given how last week’s NZBustastrophe ended, NZ Bus either received very bad PR advice from Thompson Lewis or else ignored very good PR advice from Thompson Lewis and locked out its drivers.
It is quite difficult to unite GWRC (Greater Wellington Regional Council), the mayor, his councillors, the Tramways Union, the Combined Trade Unions, the minister of transport and the vast majority of the city’s highly annoyed bus commuters – but NZ Bus has done it. Does it really think its serious staff shortage will improve if it pays its drivers less and strips their conditions?
The drivers, led by Kevin O’Sullivan, have tried to negotiate for months but met a ‘‘take it or leave it’’ response. They suggested NZ Bus might accept the living wage money offered by GWRC, but the company was uninterested. When the drivers were forced to take industrial action, they gave good notice and tried to cause the least public inconvenience. Unreasonable? I don’t think so.
Sadly, the NZBustastrophe is what can happen when venture capital companies run public transport. First Capital has a lot on its website about delivering a 25 per cent annual return for ‘‘all stakeholders’’, but little about running bus networks. I suspect it knows as much about buses as Wellington Electricity knows about electrons.
One of the ‘‘beauties’’ of the Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM) is that you and I don’t know the financial position of NZ Bus.
But surely if NZ Bus can afford to pay a top PR company, then it could afford to pay drivers a little more? Or perhaps it is paying Thompson Lewis the current bus drivers’ wage of $19.40 an hour and expecting them to work weekends and after midnight for nothing extra? Yeah right.
GWRC, under the enlightened leadership of Daran Ponter and Roger Blakeley, condemned the lockout and supported the drivers. This was a far cry from the previous GWRC leadership, who spent millions of dollars back in 2017 to pay for the tender process – which deliberately left out the important clause in GWRC contracts retaining drivers’ existing conditions if operators changed.
Everyone reacted with shock and awe to last week’s lockout, but a closer look at NZ Bus reveals that it used the same tactics in Auckland in 2009, back when it was owned by Infratil. Auckland drivers were locked out for a week then went back to work and essentially accepted the lesser conditions offered.
I’m sure First Capital thought that if a lockout worked in Auckland in 2009 then why not in Wellington in 2021? Drivers are hardly wealthy, so a few weeks of no pay would persuade them to take a drop in conditions as it did in Auckland.
But we live in different times. Wellingtonians have experienced the failure of PTOM and the way it creates a race to the bottom in drivers’ wages and conditions. They have suffered because of driver shortages so know that the union is not the problem. Incentives are needed, not lockouts.
Worse, NZ Bus hasn’t even tried to win over the public. The company decided against appearing on National Radio last week, giving the union and GWRC representatives lots of time to jointly condemn the lockout.
But now the lockout is over thanks to some smart, swift legal work from the drivers, who scored a win in the Employment Court. Thank you, driver! But don’t rejoice too heartily. Even though the ridiculous NZBustastrophe has ended, winning a battle does not ensure victory in the war.
The drivers will go into negotiation and face a well-briefed, well-heeled management team. And NZ Bus could lock out the drivers again if it doesn’t get its way. If I was transport minister, I would be quietly preparing an emergency management team to run the NZ Bus routes just in case. I’m sure the drivers would be open to it.
As for the PR battle, Thompson Lewis will give it their best, but I can’t help thinking they will struggle against low-paid drivers led by an amiable guy in a woolly jersey called Kevin who used to drive council buses in the late 1970s and who is simply asking for a small wage rise and the retention of current conditions.
First Capital has a lot on its website about delivering a 25 per cent annual return for ‘‘all stakeholders’’, but little about running bus networks.