If drivers are going to get a higher salary, you and I will have to pay more

The public sector has done some initial work in reducing the costs of bus travel. Bus drivers pay for it.

Bus drivers have somehow he already won strikes. After ten days of strikes, most of us have learned that many drivers work shifts that almost no one would find themselves in: at work from five to nine in the morning, then four hours off without pay, then at work again. until five in the afternoon.

The bus drivers are at work from four thirty in the morning until three at night. The crisis in the crown showed that their work is “socially critical”, in contrast to much of what we do.

Drivers have earned sympathy, which is important when most people are as affected as they are now. Rigid work schedules, heavy responsibility for the lives of people on the bus and high time pressure will be for many good arguments to increase wages.

Still, the bus drivers fighting to recover the wages of industrial workers, since they have an agreement since 2004.

The 2004 agreement, which was ratified in 2007, establishes that the salary of bus drivers should increase “to a level more in line with the average salary of the industrial worker.”

The background was that the bus industry was struggling to find a workforce.

In other words, the bus drivers had good cards in hand. But the same year something happened that after a quarter of an hour did a lot to undermine the bargaining power of bus drivers:

Several Eastern European countries joined the EU, which meant that workers there could work freely in Norway.

The bus company began picking up highly motivated bus drivers from the east, so there was no longer an acute shortage of drivers. Then there was no reason to increase the salary either.

For Eastern Europeans, wages in Norway were often wages in their home countries. As long as they continued to live in their home country, it was a great deal.

The recruitment did not go all that well unexpectedly. An Urbanet Analyze report prepared for NHO in 2016 showed that four out of ten drivers of large and medium-sized bus companies were foreigners.

A good deal for bus company, you might be thinking: they keep wages low and bring in money. No. The one who first turned this on is you and me.

In 1994, the Storting was opened to the county to tender for bus routes. The municipal bus companies were privatized. Foreign companies entered after one quarter.

And throughout the 2000s, competition for municipal county allocations was fierce.

It offers both taxpayers and bus riders more bus for the money. Bus operation has become much more efficient. But bus drivers have paid the price, with poorer pensions, increased time pressure and a wage guarantee that still seems far away.

The result of development It’s that the bus drivers meet an opponent who doesn’t have much to offer. The county bus companies have been stuck with very small profits.

A company like Tide Buss AS, which operates in Bergen and Tromsø, among others, has had an operating margin of two percent for the past five years. Last year, they lost NOK 22 million. Other companies have one or two percentage points more, others have less.

Unfortunately, this is an industry where the ability to generate income is limited, so to speak.

The contracts that the county enters into with the bus companies are deliberately made so that the company can not only facilitate an additional week of pay to the county. This has been done to motivate bus companies to keep salary growth low and to make county spending manageable.

Thus, an additional salary supplement to that included in the contract will exceed the income in the bus company. Some companies have contracts in which they are compensated part of the losses, but not all.

The great question for the county it is how far they can stretch this elastic. Although the company has drivers in the east, it is not certain that it will suffice. The 2016 NHO report showed that the industry will need 1,000 new drivers a year through 2030.

The reason is that the average age is high and many will retire in the next few years. The industry is struggling to hire young Norwegians, and it will hardly be easier when everyone has realized the drivers’ working hours.

Here the Austeuropearar are not cheap either. Bus companies invest a lot of resources in recruitment and training, and many of the drivers return home after a few years.

Rising wage levels and falling unemployment in their home countries also mean that Norway is not as attractive as it was in the early 2000s.

Both towns and villages they depend on the buses running when they are supposed to, they are numerous enough and have good and safe drivers. So someone must want the job.

This is a challenge and the county must take responsibility.