Edinburgh Sucks! | Seemingly it’s not the 5% or 6.15%

Andrew Burns

Seemingly it’s not the 5% or 6.15%

By The Basa ⋅ July 19, 2005 ⋅

The current industrial action taking place on Edinburgh’s buses is being publicised by the council leader as the drivers not taking a 5% rise but demanding 6.1%. However, today’s Evening News has the TGWU spokesman Peter Williamson said he was sorry that it was the public who had to suffer.

Mr Williamson added that drivers had to deal with drug addicts and assaults on a daily basis and though more money wouldn’t make these things right, it would help recognise the “huge responsibility” accompanying the job. He said that so far they’d been offered a five per cent rise “with strings”, such as putting single deck bus work on established bus routes.

If these strings were removed they would very likely accept the rise, he said.

This seems like black and white to me. The anonymous driver who we reported on last week (click here) seem to have hit it on the head. It is not about the percentages at all.

It is interesting that Teflon Don Anderson says in today’s press that it is all going well - who exactly is it all going well for? He and Bumbling Andy Burns have given the city a bus service which cannot run a normal weekday service without drivers working overtime - it is so strange that none of the press have picked up on this.

More info: Bus drivers reject arbitration plan to resolve pay dispute