![]() Greater Wellington Regional Council transport committee chairman Thomas Nash said the council was investigating if more off-peak services could be added to reduce split shifts. These become dead hours, where drivers in limbo between shifts read books, or just sit around. Many drivers live too far from depots to return home during the enforced break. Split shifts, where a driver is paid to work the morning peak, then has a four-hour unpaid break in the middle of the day before working the evening peak is another problem. Those long hours, they’ll never see their family.” “People are not going to put up with that. Throw in the commute to and from work and a typical day could be 16 hours. Adding two half-hour meal breaks takes a day up to 14 hours. The Land Transport Act allows drivers to work 13-hour days. New recruits are among the four to five drivers Froggatt sees quit the profession weekly, with many people only working for two years before moving on. ‘They’ll never see their family’ĭriver conditions remain a sticking point. The increases put the hourly pay rate on par with truck driving jobs, although trucking rates at higher levels of licence remain higher. To be eligible for entry under the immigration pathway, drivers recruited from February 27 must be paid $29.66 per hour, which is more than many drivers in New Zealand currently receive. The push to close to $30 an hour is necessary if companies hope to bring drivers in from overseas. In considering what bus company to award a tender to, councils were required to put 60 per cent of the weighting on cost. The Public Transport Operating Model, introduced by the National-led government in 2013 gets some of the blame for the stagnation of drivers’ hourly pay. A bus driver’s minimum hourly pay is between $26 to $27 an hour. To get back to the 66 per cent above minimum wage level, hourly pay would need to rise to $35.19 per hour, and $37.86 per hour after the latest minimum wage increases this month. Drivers swapped buses for trucks in search of better pay, he said. By 2019 Miller said wages were 10 to 15 per cent above minimum wage. “In 1990, the minimum you could pay a bus driver was 66 per cent above the minimum wage.”Īfter deregulation of the industry in the 1990s, this plummeted. For most people he imagined the response would be “I’d rather stack shelves at Bunnings for the same wages”.įirst Union’s researcher and policy analyst Edward Miller put figures on just how much hourly pay has eroded. Who would want to be a bus driver in New Zealand at the moment, McFadgen asked. McFadgen agreed pay was an issue and said the degradation of wages has meant few New Zealanders opted to take up the role. With borders shut during Covid lockdowns, overseas drivers were not able to be recruited.Ĭovid exacerbated the situation, but we “can’t keep blaming Covid for this problem”, said Auckland Tramways Union president Gary Froggatt, who sees four to five drivers quit the profession every week, many fed up with poor conditions and low pay. ![]() Others returned to their country of birth, “so that made the situation worse”, he said. ![]()
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