KEY POINTS:
Most of Auckland's main bus fleet will be taken off the road for several hours on Thursday as drivers debate pay offers opposed by union negotiators.
Drivers represented by four unions will hold a two-hour, paid stopwork meeting at Ellerslie Racecourse from 10.44am after completing their morning peak runs to consider two alternative pay offers from NZ Bus - the Infratil subsidiary formerly known as Stagecoach.
That means there will be no Stagecoach or Link services between about 9am and 1.30pm, although NZ Bus says all Hibiscus Coast and some Long Bay-Browns Bay buses under its North Star brand will keep running.
The unions are referring inquiries about a notice of the stopwork meeting to an independent mediator, Keith Handley, who would confirm only that an offer had been made and would be considered on the day.
But the union notice signals a potentially rocky road for Auckland bus services by advising drivers their bargaining representatives will not recommend acceptance of either of the two pay options. Although no industrial action is mentioned, the unions are understood to be keen to reinstate time-and-a-half overtime pay after each eight-hour day.
Overtime was cut to time-and-a-quarter in 2005 and became payable only after a 45-hour working week in return for an hourly wage rise of 14.7 per cent.
The first option now on offer includes a reinstatement of overtime pay after an eight-hour day, but still at time-and-a-quarter, and no pay rise before a 3 per cent increase next year.
A pay rise of 1.9 per cent now and 1.5 per cent next year is offered in the second option but drivers would have to keep working 45 hours a week before receiving overtime.
The 2005 settlement pushed the standard hourly rate to $16, which was followed by an increase last year to $16.20. But the settlement took seven months to reach and followed two strikes, including a six-day stoppage from which the British-owned Stagecoach company lost about $1 million and had a hard job regaining patronage.
New Zealand-owned Infratil bought Stagecoach's Auckland and Wellington fleets of more than 1000 buses and nine Fullers ferries in late-2005 but inherited a three million drop in annual patronage to 58.5 million passenger trips by the following June.
Patronage has only recently been on a recovery path, with the Auckland Regional Transport Authority reporting a 2.76 per cent rise across all Auckland bus operators for the 10 months to April compared with 16.86 per cent more rail trips and 0.71 per cent fewer ferry boardings.
