Give me a break

This week, as the majority of schoolchildren as well as college and university students go back to school, it promises to be a Facebook rant-filled week once again with more of the usual traffic mayhem until everyone settles back into their scholastic routine. 

But when you get to your final destination and your jangled nerves can finally recover from being out there in that nightmarish traffic, just spare a thought for the bus driver who will be going up and down over and over again the same route for the rest of the day until his shift finishes.  I don’t know about you, but I would not want to trade places with these drivers unless the remuneration was quite good, and working conditions were excellent. Unfortunately, we have no idea what kind of contract was signed with the new bus company, and we have only learned in dribs and drabs what the employees’ conditions are from news reports quoting drivers who only agreed to speak up on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.

In one report it was stated that “workers had to take their break in a container and there was only one toilet, which had to be shared among some 600 people. The water dispenser had been taken away in summer.”

This was bad enough, but I think the least that bus drivers deserve are decent breaks, which is why I was stunned to learn that what the drivers’ strike was all about on Friday was that the new bus company Malta Public Transport was refusing to give them an adequate half hour break in a six-hour stretch but was expecting them to take short breaks in spurts of five minutes. Five minutes?  What is this, a time warp back to the era of Charles Dickens?  It would take a driver that long to just park, get out of the bus and stretch his legs before time was up to get back to work in his driving seat.

Imagine, if you will, having to drive around Malta’s road system every single day for a living, maneuvering a large bus through impossibly narrow lanes and badly parked cars, trying to avoid pedestrians who seem to think they can just cross the road without looking both ways first. Imagine that your daily “office” is a chaotic, overcrowded, potholed network, with road works everywhere you look and inconsiderate, reckless drivers on the brink of flipping out, and flipping you off, at every turn due to road rage.  And it’s not just the rush hours which are the worst, because I think it is safe to say that we have come to a point where every hour of the day seems to be a rush hour.

All this, while dealing with members of the public who climb onto your bus with their wide variety of moods and attitudes.  

Even one hour of all that would drive any sane person round the bend, so I cannot imagine having to do it day in, day out for a salary which is apparently “just above the minimum wage” according to news reports.

It is impossible to ignore the bitter irony that these deplorable working conditions are happening under an administration which is led by the Labour party - the workers’ party, or so it used to be in days gone by.  The party which used to defend the rights and dignity of the common working man and woman; the blue collar strata of society who only want a decent pay for a decent day’s work.  So what has happened along the way to create this scenario of exploitation where grown men and women have to take the streets in order to demand what should basically be theirs by right: an adequate break to help them recharge and be able to face the remainder of the long hours ahead? 

And please do not say that the government has nothing to do with it, because the contract with the mother company Autobus de Leon was signed precisely with the government, as a result of which the company Malta Public Transport was born.  The terms and conditions by means of which Leon won the tender to provide the public transport service after Arriva threw in the towel, are fully known to the government, so this administration can hardly claim not to know what it was signing. Exactly what was it signing away with the stroke of a pen when it agreed to the deal?  The details of the contract are so sketchy and mysterious I can only resort to quoting from the news report:

“The company said the new set of duty parameters it had proposed had been accepted by the union throughout four months of negotiations and were in line with all local and European labour laws and regulations.

However the union had presented fresh proposals which were a radical departure from the main parameters that had already been accepted. 48 hours were not enough for it to review them in detail and understand their implications.”

This does not tell us much, except that the company wants one thing and the unions want another. Meanwhile, the drivers are unhappy, as are regular commuters who have yet to be guaranteed an efficient, reliable service to get from Point A to Point B.  If we were told what the exact conditions were, we would be better placed to decide who is right in all of this - are the drivers and the unions representing them being unreasonable or is the company expecting the impossible? Have we been regaled with an Arriva Mark II because (despite heavy subsidies) the lack of enough regular commuters make Malta’s bus service financially unviable?  It seems we are caught up in a perpetual Catch 22 - no one can make public transport sufficiently attractive for people to leave their cars at home, which means it will be running at a loss, drivers will continue to be miserably paid and forced to work long hours, while prices will have to go up, which means even less commuters will use the service.

Perhaps it is time to admit defeat and realize that:

(a) the bus service can never be anything but a loss-making venture so the government might as well nationalise it and run the whole thing itself.

(b) without adequate pay and good conditions, drivers will be resentful, which is not the best way to ensure that they will be happy on the job

(c) it will take a very drastic measure, such as was suggested by this newspaper yesterday (free bus transport for schoolchildren) in order to wake people up to the realisation that bussing it is not the end of the world.  

Ultimately, a public transport service which is indeed a service is essential in any country. But providing it should not come at the expense of that bus driver sitting in the driving seat, navigating Malta’s roads and being treated shamefully by his employers.