Driver Shortage on Dublin Bus

devnull

Lots of no show buses on a variety of routes early to mid morning with some cross city routes running at less than half their frequency.

When I eventually did get a bus was told that there was a shortage of drivers due to illness....

Blue flu so they can attend the protests or just Halloween?

joegriffinjnr

A lot of hungover people this morning....

punisher5112

They have not got enough drivers period as with not hiring for 5 years and now with all the new rules and been very hard on new to be recruits lots are not passing.

They got rid of buses and don't have enough for high cappacity routes and with 2 clerical personnel to every driver costs are huge throughout the company.

More drivers badly needed.

It can happen anywhere where a lot of people could be sick or something at any one given time also making it difficult to plan for this.

Also when the driving time hour rule came in it destroyed the company as drivers have to have minimum 10 hrs gap.

I find the job and duties worse since they let that in.

frankyboy1986

also alot of drivers not bothering doing overtime due to 52% of it being lost in tax,and to add to that saturday has always been a disaster anyways for staffing issues...

n97 mini

Were drivers not spending the summer watching TV when capacity was reduced? Suggests that if everyone turns up for work there are enough drivers.

It irks me that less frequent services get cancelled willy nilly. A service with a frequency of one hour or longer should not be cancelled.

frankyboy1986

n97 mini wrote: »

Were drivers not spending the summer watching TV when capacity was reduced? Suggests that if everyone turns up for work there are enough drivers.

It irks me that less frequent services get cancelled willy nilly. A service with a frequency of one hour or longer should not be cancelled.

Not necessarily,DB is still terribly understaffed even with the summer reduction in services,the current recruitment campaign is the first in 6 years and over the last 6 years many drivers have either quit or retired and theres also quite a few on long term sick leave with nobody to replace them.Im a DB driver and they are regularly struggling to fill duties during the summer and I was pretty much guaranteed as much o-t as I wanted even this time of year theres still plenty going,then whenever anything out of the ordinary happened e.g a crash on the Quays or protest march things pretty much go tits up with no extra staff to cover the gaps in the service.

cdebru

n97 mini wrote: »

Were drivers not spending the summer watching TV when capacity was reduced? Suggests that if everyone turns up for work there are enough drivers.

It irks me that less frequent services get cancelled willy nilly. A service with a frequency of one hour or longer should not be cancelled.

Never seen any drivers watching TV or spare during the summer in fact they were short staffed, even with the summer reductions.

Whilst you are technically correct that if everyone on the books was in work then all duties would be covered, it is an company with over 2000 drivers and some will be sick, some long term, some short term some even terminal, people will be bereaved, or on holidays, or be on maternity leave etc etc etc, they are short staffed as a result of over 5 years of not hiring and it taking much longer than they anticipated to hire new staff ( and retain those new staff, apparently people aren't all that desperate to work and dont like working late every weekend, who knew ???)

Nothing gets canceled willy nilly and inspectors are not allowed ( supposed) to strip one road to cover shortages in another, the shortages are just more noticeable on less frequent routes. If you dont have staff you dont have staff, and hiring isn't as easy as people claimed it would be with the 400,000 people on the dole, obviously it mustn't be the easy number so many here claimed it was.

n97 mini

cdebru wrote: »

Never seen any drivers watching TV or spare during the summer

I only know what one of the other drivers on here said.

the boss of me

Cuts in rest day pay rates and tax hikes mean drivers come out with about 85 for working a rest day. They could start at 3pm and finish at 12.30am to earn that. Little wonder then, that drivers are not queuing up to work rest days.

cdebru

n97 mini wrote: »

I only know what one of the other drivers on here said.

May have been in his/her garage or maybe just on his shift but not city wide.

n97 mini

the boss of me wrote: »

Cuts in rest day pay rates and tax hikes mean drivers come out with about 85 for working a rest day. They could start at 3pm and finish at 12.30am to earn that. Little wonder then, that drivers are not queuing up to work rest days.

Plenty of people would be happy with that. Do DB do job bridge? Maybe they should if they don't.

cdebru

the boss of me wrote: »

Cuts in rest day pay rates and tax hikes mean drivers come out with about 85 for working a rest day. They could start at 3pm and finish at 12.30am to earn that. Little wonder then, that drivers are not queuing up to work rest days.

Correct also the people who used to do overtine , used to work overtime virtually everyday, they can't now with the 48 hour week, also silly little things like the company being tightfisted with how they pay simply puts people off. Like only paying overtime from offiical finish time not actual finish time, or agreeing to pay someone 2 hours and a manager reviews it afterwards and pays 90 minutes. Silly things like that and the reduction in the rate for first 2 hours of overtime they have shot themselves in the foot.
It was said here at the time of the last cuts that they would struggle to get people to do rest days and overtime and that's what you are seeing.

cdebru

n97 mini wrote: »

Plenty of people would be happy with that. Do DB do job bridge? Maybe they should if they don't.

Haha we heard all that before, but where are these people who would be happy with it and why is it taking DB so long to get staff?

punisher5112

Yeah all those that said anyone could do your job and someone would do it for half of what your on.

They all must have left the country 400,000 of them

n97 mini

Hard to make a case when the ones you have are watching TV

Although, and this is a serious question, are DB participating in job bridge and if not, why not?

punisher5112

n97 mini wrote: »

Hard to make a case when the ones you have are watching TV

On breaks yes but while there is work no not true at all.

This happened back when they recruited big in 2006, 2007 and they were expecting to have new routes and a new depot built so they had planned ahead and of course this then did not happen.

Drivers would be spare and in some garages could be 50 drivers not able to get into a bus.

This does not happen now and if anyone told you that they are pulling your chain.

Dravokivich

cdebru wrote: »

Haha we heard all that before, but where are these people who would be happy with it and why is it taking DB so long to get staff?

The last hiring campaign I saw by Dublin Bus, they were looking for people who already had the relevant licenses. Seems they are looking to cut training costs by no longer putting new hires through lessons/exams/testing for it.

cdebru

Dravokivich wrote: »

The last hiring campaign I saw by Dublin Bus, they were looking for people who already had the relevant licenses. Seems they are looking to cut training costs by no longer putting new hires through lessons/exams/testing for it.

Yes, I would imagine they will have to change that fairly soon I think DB management believed all the hype that there were thousands waiting in the wings to drive buses given half a chance, so they thought they could only take the trained ones and give them ****ty shifts, the reality has proven somewhat different.

punisher5112

Dravokivich wrote: »

The last hiring campaign I saw by Dublin Bus, they were looking for people who already had the relevant licenses. Seems they are looking to cut training costs by no longer putting new hires through lessons/exams/testing for it.

It was also to speed up things as they don't have to have you driving for a month or more.

cdebru

n97 mini wrote: »

Hard to make a case when the ones you have are watching TV

Although, and this is a serious question, are DB participating in job bridge and if not, why not?

Yeah they are keeping up with lovehate rather than driving, the unions insist on it.

Not as far as I know, why I presume because it mightn't be a great idea having people drive buses for your social welfare plus €50. Unions dont like slavebridge either is possibly another reason.

punisher5112

cdebru wrote: »

Yes, I would imagine they will have to change that fairly soon I think DB management believed all the hype that there were thousands waiting in the wings to drive buses given half a chance, so they thought they could only take the trained ones and give them ****ty shifts, the reality has proven somewhat different.

Don't forget those already working in DB as I have 8 years on junior rota.

That means only getting 1 Sat off every 5 weeks and early means nothing could be 2100 or 2200 finish

L1011

n97 mini wrote: »

Although, and this is a serious question, are DB participating in job bridge and if not, why not?

Very few qualified drivers on the dole, unions hate it, atrocious from a PR perspective to be seen to do it.

Vic_08

n97 mini wrote: »

Hard to make a case when the ones you have are watching TV

Although, and this is a serious question, are DB participating in job bridge and if not, why not?

How many people do you think there are on the dole with full D licences, valid CPC and experience?

Anyone in that category willing to work for €50 on top of their dole will have a very dodgy past such as driving bans or criminal records, something making them virtually unemployable in any reputable driving job.

And for anyone without the proper qualifications, how many of them are going to invest over 1k in training for €50 a week?

Jobbridge is a joke of a scheme whose main purpose is to provide cheap labour for throwaway jobs, as much as you and certain others on here like to think so bus driving is not in that category. It is far from a great job but with the required training and (for decent employers anyway) a requirement of keeping a clean driving record it is never going to be a job where qualified applicants are going to be desperate enough to have to put up with that sort of exploitation.

LXFlyer

n97 mini wrote: »

Were drivers not spending the summer watching TV when capacity was reduced? Suggests that if everyone turns up for work there are enough drivers.

It irks me that less frequent services get cancelled willy nilly. A service with a frequency of one hour or longer should not be cancelled.

n97 mini wrote: »

I only know what one of the other drivers on here said.

As I posted at the time - I would take those posts with a grain of salt.


There was a very definite driver shortage over the summer despite the summer timetables, with plenty of buses cancelled.

n97 mini

Vic_08 wrote: »

How many people do you think there are on the dole with full D licences, valid CPC and experience?

Job bridge is an apprenticeship type scheme. It's aimed at those who want to get experience/training in a particular area, not those who already have it.

In my industry it works quite well. A lot of people now employed fulltime who came in via JB.

s8080

heres the facts, certain routes WHERE running a reduced service during the summer.
route reduced from 100% service to 80%,the drivers who where on these reduced service routes who where the 20% DID NOT WORK . they watched TV in the canteen and where not allowed to work under orders from the NTA.

some drivers here say it did not happen, im afraid it did.
if driver started early ie 6am, the driver would have left depot before the 20% turned up to watch TV, and if the driver was working late ie 3pm, the 20% would have finished their shift of watching TV and gone home.

thats the truth, the public have a hard time believing and so do some drivers, but it is 100% the truth, these drivers watched TV for the summer on the orders of the NTA.

mikemac1

Do Dublin Bus have something like builders holidays? If services reduce during the summer do management force the drivers to use the annual leave then and not have them missing when it gets busier?

s8080

dublin bus tried a few years ago to force drivers to use their holidays, drivers had no problem with this, but management did.
management- driver you have to take some days holiday.
driver- ok i take next weekend off.
M- no cant give you those days off
D- ok, ill take the weekend after that.
M- cant give you that one either.
D- what about the one after that
M- sorry no can do
D- you want me to take holiday but you wont give me the days i want.
M-you can have next tuesday and thursday.
D- so you want me to have tuesday and thursday off but work on wednesday , its ok forget about it
M- i want you to take holidays
D- well give me the days off i want
M- i cant
D- i will get back to you

it can be like pulling teeth trying to get a day of when you want, so a lot of drivers carry over many days holidays each year.

JimsAlterEgo

punisher5112 wrote: »

with 2 clerical personnel to every driver costs are huge throughout the company.

:eek: is that true?

AlekSmart

JimsAlterEgo wrote: »

:eek: is that true?

No.

jimmycrackcorm

s8080 wrote:

heres the facts, certain routes WHERE running a reduced service during the summer. route reduced from 100% service to 80%,the drivers who where on these reduced service routes who where the 20% DID NOT WORK . they watched TV in the canteen and where not allowed to work under orders from the NTA.

Why would the NTA insist on that, and isn't it the case that the unions would block free drivers from operating busses on other routes where there were staff off sick or the like....

Stevek101

Highly doubt there is any truth in these statements. I'd imagine this is geared as some attack towards the NTA due to route tendering.

cdebru

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Why would the NTA insist on that, and isn't it the case that the unions would block free drivers from operating busses on other routes where there were staff off sick or the like....

Neither statement is true, the agreement for summer schedules is that drivers are given a duty with a finishing time as close to what they would be on as possible, but no guarantee if you are early the only guarantee is you will be finished before 4pm relief finish before 10pm and late you won't start before 2pm, they try to keep marked in drivers on their own route, but not guaranteed. The hierarchy for losing a car is euro bogies go first then Mon to Fri then bogies and lastly 5 over 7.

Everything else is bull****.

There was no block of drivers not allowed to work, and the only reason the anyone could refuse to drive another route would be if they had never been route trained on that route ( ie they dont know where it goes) in which case they would have to be route trained before they could work it other than that there is no block on anything.