Bus Vannin in Crisis

[0bserver]

8 hours ago, Numbnuts said:

Ahhhh but they never had this big debt hanging over them and not a scooby how to pay it. The good old empty pension pot ! Wonder how thats accumlating recently 

Now that CT is inside the Comin Big Top, I don't think we'll see any updates. He seemed to ask the questions that gave us those figures. 

[A fool and his money.....]

7 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

As far as I can tell, nobody is paying to train as a bus driver.  Moorhouse (inevitably) asked in May: What the total cost of training bus drivers is; how many were trained in each of the last five years; and how many of these are still working for Bus Vannin.

Crookall replied:

The total cost of training bus drivers over the last five years is £41,332.

In 2017, 16 drivers were trained; in 2018, 15 drivers were trained; in 2019, it was 24 drivers; in 2020, it was 27 drivers; in 2021, it was 19 drivers; and so far this year it has been seven.

Of the total of 108 drivers who have been trained over the last five years, a total of 29 have left Bus Vannin; 18 of these were casual drivers and 11 were permanent – leaving 79 of those still with us.

From supplementaries, all training and testing is done internally. It would have been pertinent to also ask what the casual/permanent split was among those who remained.  Although the numbers trained looks good, if those new drivers are mostly casuals, working a few hours when it suits, maybe extra to another full-time job, then they're not going to help much.

There was also an interesting remark from a certain Mr Thomas:

The Bus Vannin management keeps training – and in fact everything else about HR – very close
to itself. Does the Minister agree with me it might be helpful to include Bus Vannin in wider Public
Services Commission Government processes?

Though you could also argue that HR is an area the government is mismanaging even worse than the buses.

In all that time I've never once seen an advert for trainee drivers so Christ knows where they are getting them all from.

I suspect this answer is similar to "there were no busses cancelled in TT fortnight", ie more concerned with making BV look good than actually being true.

[The Voice of Reason]

1 hour ago, Manx Bean said:

I agree, but from a slightly different angle. The current advert for casual bus drivers states pay of £12.60-£14.17 p/h. So, in reality probably £12.60 p/h. So, for that you are expected to turn up at all hours, drive a large passenger carrying vehicle and be responsible for the safety of what..56 passengers? Taking the odd piece of abuse for good measure.

In contrast, you can go work in KFC for £11.50 p/h on guaranteed shifts and get a free lunch every day.

Go figure.

 

 

 

Well I’ve figured it’s not all about the money. 

There are other factors to take into account.

Some would find more job satisfaction in being a bus driver than working at KFC.

They may enjoy driving through our lovely countryside and interacting with passengers (apart from those who give them abuse obviously) rather than sitting behind a hatch dishing out bags of fried chicken through car windows. ( which suits some)

Horses for courses and all that.

[0bserver]

7 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Well I’ve figured it’s not all about the money. 

There are other factors to take into account.

Some would find more job satisfaction in being a bus driver than working at KFC.

They may enjoy driving through our lovely countryside and interacting with passengers (apart from those who give them abuse obviously) rather than sitting behind a hatch dishing out bags of fried chicken through car windows. ( which suits some)

Horses for courses and all that.

TBH anyone with those qualities is already driving buses. It's not a great pool of potential candidates at present. 

It's an employees market. 

That may all change when the recession really hits. 

[P.K.]

2 hours ago, Manx Bean said:

I agree, but from a slightly different angle. The current advert for casual bus drivers states pay of £12.60-£14.17 p/h. So, in reality probably £12.60 p/h. So, for that you are expected to turn up at all hours, drive a large passenger carrying vehicle and be responsible for the safety of what..56 passengers? Taking the odd piece of abuse for good measure.

In contrast, you can go work in KFC for £11.50 p/h on guaranteed shifts and get a free lunch every day.

Go figure.

Paying a low wage is a false economy.

Because you train your staff up and then they leave for a rival company that pays the going rate.

Which means you then have to go through the massive pita that is a recruitment drive. And guess what?

To hire people you have to pay the going rate!

So you end up paying it anyway...

I would like to know if the recruitment figures include all those taken on to drive Longworth's taxi-busting minibuses...?

[BriT]

1 hour ago, Non-Believer said:

24hrs notice is generous compared with some of these ZHC terms/employers. I've heard of people being called in at less than a couple of hour's notice on occasions with the employer then getting shirty if the "offer" is declined and "overlooking" the employee concerned on the next occasion. They forget that ZHC works both ways.

Yes I get that if you work at Boots or something. All you have to do is drive in at short notice. But early and late shifts at short notice are dangerous. Especially for driving jobs. Who knows whether someone might have been on the piss the night before, before they’re asked at short notice to do a 7AM pick up? So not only do the terms and conditions appear to be shit. They also appear to be potentially dangerous from a risk perspective. I was interested in learning more but potentially getting out of bed at 4AM for £12:60 an hour forget it! 

[Roger Mexico]

23 minutes ago, P.K. said:

I would like to know if the recruitment figures include all those taken on to drive Longworth's taxi-busting minibuses...?

They would have had to, because the qualifications to drive those would need to be the same as for driving an ordinary bus.  And they provided so little extra service that they didn't take up much manpower.  The truth is they didn't buy the minibuses to provide the service, they invented the service to justify the purchase.

[kevster]

12 hours ago, BriT said:

Can I ask how do you find it? I’ve actively tried to find these jobs via all the obvious outlets (job centre etc’) and couldn’t. 

Gov website. Click 'Finding a job' and then 'Public Sector Vacancies'

It's not rocket salad

[P.K.]

10 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

They would have had to, because the qualifications to drive those would need to be the same as for driving an ordinary bus.  And they provided so little extra service that they didn't take up much manpower.  The truth is they didn't buy the minibuses to provide the service, they invented the service to justify the purchase.

Usually staff is your biggest cost. Mind you I have no idea of how much service cycles are on a very expensive Merc bus. Even so staff driving lightly laden minibuses instead of well loaded buses looks like a very poor use of resources to me...

[A fool and his money.....]

58 minutes ago, P.K. said:

Paying a low wage is a false economy.

Because you train your staff up and then they leave for a rival company that pays the going rate.

Which means you then have to go through the massive pita that is a recruitment drive. And guess what?

To hire people you have to pay the going rate!

So you end up paying it anyway...

I would like to know if the recruitment figures include all those taken on to drive Longworth's taxi-busting minibuses...?

Let's not forget BV have spent the last ten years eroding those pay and conditions for the drivers so this is a situation entirely of their own making.

The service is now a shadow of what it was, it would be interesting to see if any savings have been made.

It would be very interesting to see how management pay and conditions have changed in the same time.

I think you've got to remember, the shit show we're currently in and the lies fed to Tynwald are not due to poor driving, but poor management.

Perhaps BV should rethink their savings strategy.

[P.K.]

13 minutes ago, Roxanne said:

A subject that was debated on here at the time where people uninvolved with government said exactly the same thing. Anyone could see what was going to come from this - except the very people paid to run it.

They are running it - into the ground...

[Roger Mexico]

1 hour ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Well I’ve figured it’s not all about the money. 

There are other factors to take into account.

Some would find more job satisfaction in being a bus driver than working at KFC.

They may enjoy driving through our lovely countryside and interacting with passengers (apart from those who give them abuse obviously) rather than sitting behind a hatch dishing out bags of fried chicken through car windows. ( which suits some)

Horses for courses and all that.

I wish you well in your new career.

But of course what you say shows up the current Bus Vannin strategy for the failure it is.  Because all those job satisfaction benefits only apply if you have a full-time regular job working regular hours and probably on the same regular routes.  You're meeting the same passengers, helping people out regularly, know the latest information to tell people. 

That's not going to apply if you're on zero-hours, doing a random and ever-changing mixture of duties, even if you are working full hours.  And a zero-hours model even undermines the job satisfaction of those who are full-time employees on regular hours, because they are always being moved around to fill gaps or being asked to work extra hours they don't really want to.

[Non-Believer]

4 hours ago, A fool and his money..... said:

It would be very interesting to see how management pay and conditions have changed in the same time.

This has been happening, pan-Island since the VAT reduction 12+ years ago.

I remember that somebody posted on here that they thought the Island's population would turn inwards upon themselves like longtails in a barrel and so it is happening. Those with the power to do so are imposing cuts on those below them in order to maintain (and justify, if it wasn't such a joke in many cases) their own pay and conditions.

When was the last time you saw an accountant or manager turn the knife upon themselves?

[cissolt]

13 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

This has been happening, pan-Island since the VAT reduction 12+ years ago.

I remember that somebody posted on here that they thought the Island's population would turn inwards upon themselves like longtails in a barrel and so it is happening. Those with the power to do so are imposing cuts on those below them in order to maintain (and justify, if it wasn't such a joke in many cases) their own pay and conditions.

When was the last time you saw an accountant or manager turn the knife upon themselves?

Did the kmpg report recommend reducing the number of civil servants as an alternative to growing the population?

[Numbnuts]

37 minutes ago, cissolt said:

Did the kmpg report recommend reducing the number of civil servants as an alternative to growing the population?

Who appointed them to do the report ? Mmmmmm yes CS and ministers so theres your answer in one .