ERA steps into bus dispute - disruptions set to continue

People who rely on the Link bus may be forced to walk. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Auckland's major bus dispute, which threatens to keep disrupting travel for up to 80,000 passengers again tomorrow as almost 900 drivers and cleaners remain locked out, is going under the microscope of the Government's Employment Relations Authority.

The authority has this afternoon accepted an urgent application by the region's largest bus operator, NZ Bus, to become involved in the dispute on public interest grounds.

But authority member Dzintra King indicated it was the company's action in serving a lockout notice on almost 900 drivers and workers, which came into force at 4.30am today, that gave her agency jurisdiction to provide "facilitation" assistance to the warring parties.

She said a union work-to-rule notice, to which the company responded by locking out the workers, would not in itself have been sufficient in law to trigger the employment authority's intervention.

"Had this been a situation where the unions had given strike notice of work to rule I would not have found that the public interest would be affected substantially," Dr King said in her decision.

"The lockout notice, which is of indefinite duration, clearly has the potential to have significant and detrimental effects."

Dr King said people risked losing income if they could not get to work in the absence of public transport and employers may lose business."

Her decision cleared the way for the chief of the employment authority, James Wilson, to open an immediate facilitation process in which he has jurisdiction to recommend terms of settlement of the pay dispute.

He began the process by excluding reporters from a meeting this afternoon with the company and the four bus unions, after saying it would be at his discretion whether such a recommendation was made public.

Combined unions spokesman Karl Andersen told a peaceful but sombre picket by about 100 workers outside the Roskill bus depot this morning that his team was "a bit fearful" of having a third party review the dispute without practical knowledge of what it was like to work as a driver.

But he said any recommendation by the authority would be "non-binding" on parties to the dispute, and he urged the drivers to attend a mass rally outside company offices at its central city bus depot in Halsey St tomorrow morning.

Newmarket Business Association chief executive Cameron Brewer called for the dispute to be sorted out before the final school term starts in Monday, piling more pressure on Auckland's transport system.

The Auckland Regional Transport Authority has arranged extra "skeleton" services from other bus operators and confirmed today it would withhold about $160,000 a day in public subsidies from NZ Bus for as long as it was not providing the services for which it was contracted.

"It's just commonsense really - no services, no payment," said transport authority spokeswoman Sharon Hunter.

NZ operations manager Zane Fulljames welcomed the employment authority's decision but said bus services would remain suspended until the unions lifted their notice of industrial action, which mainly include working to the letter of the company's rule book.