By Graham Mathews and Tracy Sorensen
The state government bus service in Newcastle is the latest target in the Greiner Liberal government's "Privatisation is for everyone" campaign. The bus drivers' union, public transport lobby groups and environmentalists are campaigning against this threat, pointing out that Sydney public bus routes could be sold off next.
Rather than benefiting "everyone", say those opposing the move, the sell-off would slash drivers' wages and conditions, increasing stress and uncertainty in an already stressful job. It would raise fares and reduce services, while privatisation of the more profitable Sydney routes would create a motley patchwork of services under no compulsion to connect with each other.
The government began its moves against Newcastle bus drivers in March, when transport minister Bruce Baird delivered an ultimatum: accept "workplace reform" to bring wages and conditions into line with those in private bus companies, or tenders would be called for the Newcastle bus service. Working conditions in the private sector are notoriously bad and the pay much lower.
Baird told the media that Newcastle drivers' "rorts" and "old-fashioned" work practises had caused a $6 million a year budget deficit which was obstructing the government's plan to make the service "self-financing".
The government's demands include the elimination of a rostered day off, a return to a 38-hour week and an increase in maximum shift time from eight and a half to nine hours. Under such conditions, working for the government would hardly differ from working for a private employer — which is what the government intends.
The drivers' union, the ATMOEA, has decided to take the issue head on. Bus drivers in Newcastle and Sydney stopped work on May 12 to protest against the government's plans. A mass meeting of the ATMOEA in Sydney voted to recommend national strike action if privatisation tenders are called for any State Transit Authority bus route.
Baird has complained that Newcastle is a "bastion of inefficiency", with the bus service costing three times as much per passenger there as in Sydney. But the union points out that because Newcastle is a low population density area, the cost of service per passenger is inevitably higher, and that this is taken into account through a government subsidy.
The "deficit" over which Baird is attempting to create an outcry was actually created by the withdrawal of this subsidy. ATMOEA organisers point out that a private bus company would not be viable in Newcastle without substantial subsidies, and that, in fact, the be prepared to make subsidies part of the package on offer to prospective buyers.
The union has made occupational health and safety a focus of its campaign to defend working conditions.
"In essence the campaign is driven by occupational health", Dennis McIntyre, Newcastle ATMOEA honorary health and safety consultant, told Green Left. "Acceding to management would make an already stressful workplace even more so."
Studies show that the organisation of work, including the pace, hours of work, staffing levels, timetables and rosters are at the heart of driver fatigue and illness.
An independent report from a committee comprising management, union and Workcover appointees released on May 8 found stress to be a major problem among bus drivers and recommended that immediate steps be taken to alleviate it — steps which move in the opposite direction to current government demands.
The fact that privatisation of the Sydney routes is in the wind is clear from the introduction of a five-year contract system for the provision of bus services. Contracts are to be signed on a depot-by-depot basis, and all services are to be provided on a "commercial" basis. Job shedding has been seized on as the most effective way to "self-financing" services.
"We suspect that there's a political bias to the depot-by-depot approach, a politico-industrial connotation", the research and publicity officer for the Manly Warringah Public Transport coalition, Norman Rich, told Green Left. "In other words, reduce standards at one depot, get rid of drivers, get the others to agree to certain changes in conditions, hold up the privatisation threat, and then march on to the next depot."
Consultants for private bus companies are known to be comparing the profitability of the various routes.
According to the ATMOEA and public transport lobby groups, privatisation would result in reduced peak, off-peak and weekend services in line with government guidelines for "minimum service levels". Pensioners would be unable to use their $1 a day concession tickets on private buses.
According to Norman Rich, one of the worst effects of privatisation would be the lack of coordination between private and public bus services (or between different private services).
"When you have a fragmentation of services, to get from A to B you have to go to X first and then to B", said Rich. "You go to X and wait an hour to get from X to B, because that's in the next franchise area."
This situation exists now where private bus companies operate in Forestville on Sydney's north shore.
In Forestville, said Rich, "the government bus service can't pick people up until it gets through the [private] franchise area. At the changeover point, you can wait for half an hour to an hour for the next bus, because the private fellow is under no obligation whatever to coordinate with the government bus."
The campaign against bus privatisation is being supported by Greenpeace, on the grounds that public transport should be extended and made more attractive to users in order to protect the environment.