(12 Dec 2021, 11:12 pm)Andreos1 wrote Day to day management within the operators have led to a high turnover of staff for years and years.
That's been brushed over by the MSM too or turned in to a political football when strike action is brought up.
This is something we don't look at or talk about enough. It's always the fault of external factors, whether that be congestion, the speed of getting applicants through the DVLA and so on, but as you say, there's been a high turnover of staff right across the industry for years.
I thought there was an interesting line from Martijn on Politics North at the weekend: "Because there is such competition for employment at the moment, people weren't prepared to wait. They didn't need to wait. A better job in another sector was coming along before they had their start dates."
I'm sure it wasn't intended to be the case, but it almost sounds like a defeatist attitude. There's a lot that operators could do to improve the working environment and make people want to come and work from them over competing sectors. Pay of course has a lot to do with it, but the working conditions are another big part of it. You start valuing people instead of a constant focus on cutting overheads, then you start to get loyalty from your workforce.
Also noticed a reference from Cllr Gannon on the same programme, that "the Government needing to make more money available for "what is called" public transport" - only it's not. As operators are keen to remind us, it's a business that needs to make profit. You can't keep requesting that the funding tap be switched on every time you need to top the margin up.