(03 Oct 2023, 11:36 pm)streetdeckfan wrote This might be an unpopular opinion, but the drivers were already offered a 'decent wage' and as usual the unions decided to try and push their luck. They've got to make it look like they're doing something otherwise how are they going to rake in their millions?
The fact of the matter is GNE are loss making and do not have the money to pay drivers more. More pay for drivers means they can afford less drivers. There is no magic money tree.
While an extra few percent doesn't sound like much, it's an extra £2m a year they're asking GNE to come up with. Actually that still doesn't sound like a lot, but that's an extra 70 full time drivers GNE could hire even after the 9.5% pay rise they were offered, or more likely 70 full time drivers they need to justify keeping around when they're already haemorrhaging money.
(feel free to check my maths, it's late and I didn't fancy breaking out Excel to work it out properly)
As for MG, I really do think his heart was in the right place, but he was screwed over by the pandemic. Passenger numbers had actually started increasing after he implemented the changes, so obviously something was working, had he become MD a year or two earlier, perhaps GNE would be in a much stronger position now?
Sent from my SM-F721B using Tapatalk
In your opinion, they were offered a 'decent wage'. I don't know who you think 'the unions' are, but the Union members rejected that offer by ballot, and thus far, the company have failed to come up with anything likely to meet the demands set out by members. It's literally how it works in any democratic organisation.
I'm not going to question the maths, but if you're arguing that it's an extra £2million a year which equals 70 full time drivers, just remember that there's a single person employed by Go Ahead with a package worth over half of that. You can't cry poverty whilst being obscene at the other end of the tree.
On MG, I think someone's heart being in the right place and them having a sound business mind, are two completely separate things. Even before the pandemic, he wasted a lot of money on vanity projects that were never likely to make a return. This was on top of the same short-termism that has ruined the network over the past 20 years.
(04 Oct 2023, 5:56 am)Storx wrote Passenger numbers are irrelevant though when you slashed the fares in the process. At the end of the day he was there to make a profit.
If I slashed the fares by half using economics then you need the passenger numbers to double on that route and it didn't happen and never was going to.
At the end of the day it's better to have 15 passengers on the bus all paying an average of £6 than 28 passengers paying an average of £3 especially if 3 of those are unruly little kids pissing everyone off who wouldn't be anywhere near it at the higher price.
If my only task was to get passenger numbers up I'd just make the buses free, I'd do the job but I'd 100% expect to be sacked at the same time.
Taking your point about doubling numbers, I still think he had to look at the fares. They were, and still are, vastly overpriced. It doesn't matter what a business does in trying to justify a fare being X, because it's up to a customer to decide whether that X equals value.
In a way, it's why commercial bus operations are on the most part, on life support. They cannot sustain their business, because they've failed for decades to achieve any decent level of organic growth. Costs are always going to go up; you can't avoid that, but you can improve what is coming in at the other end.
(04 Oct 2023, 7:25 am)streetdeckfan wrote Unpaid breaks is pretty much standard across most industries now, I don't get my breaks paid. I personally see it as encouragement to actually take your break since nobody wants to work for free, but I appreciate the breaks are mandatory in some roles.
As for the driving hours, as long as it's still within the legal limits, then what's the issue?
Sent from my SM-F721B using Tapatalk
It's a limit, not a target. It's what a business has to do as the bare minimum to remain within the law.
When you struggle to recruit and retain for so long, you really need to start talking to your workforce and look at the conditions you're asking them to work under.