Press Release – Tuesday 7th August 2012

NZ Bus Works Hard to Cover All School Services during Friday’s Union Meeting

NZ Bus received notice yesterday, that Tramways and First Union will be calling a stop work meeting this Friday August 10th to discuss their Collective Agreement negotiations. The meeting will cause disruption to scheduled services between 11am and 4:30pm.

NZ Bus formally requested the union meeting be held earlier in the day, as would normally happen, to ensure less disruption to scheduled services and school services, but the unions have refused their request.

NZ Bus confirmed today that it will be able to run all scheduled school trips on Friday. “We don’t want to see any kids left on the side of the road and we’ve worked hard to be able to cover all dedicated school trips across Auckland on Friday” said Mr. Shane McMahon, COO NZ Bus.

Unfortunately, as a result of the union meeting, all North Star, Go West, Metrolink, City Link, Inner Link, Outer Link and Waka Pacific bus services will not run between 11am and 4:30pm. Normal services will resume from 4:30pm onwards. Bus services operated by Ritchies Transport, Howick & Eastern, Birkenhead Transport, Urban Express, Waiheke Buses, Northern Express and Airbus services are not affected.

Negotiations between NZ Bus, Tramways and First Unions have been held over 14 days. Whilst the natural tension points exist as they do with all collective negotiations, dialogue has been constructive to date.

The offer on the table is to increase wages by 6.6% over 27 months in three movements, with the first increase in July of this year. NZ Bus drivers in Auckland also received a 3.3% increase 5 months ago, in February of this year.

“We are close and the offer to increase hourly wages to $20 by April 2014 would see our Operators paid $1.45 more than our largest competitor” said Mr.McMahon. “Like all businesses we want to see our people earn more money, but that needs to be balanced against the need to remain competitive and ensure job security for all our people”.

NZ Bus wish to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused this Friday.

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