BC Government to Provide Bus Service on Highway of Tears

The Toronto Star reports that the British Columbia government says a bus service will be available between Prince George and Prince Rupert by the end of the year on a notorious stretch of road known as the Highway of Tears.

Eighteen women have been murdered or have disappeared along Highway 16 and adjacent routes since the 1970s.

Transportation Minister Todd Stone says agreements between 16 communities along the highway will allow B.C. Transit to operate a scheduled bus service, slated to start at the end of the year. The provincial government announced a five-point transportation plan late last year that promised regular B.C. Transit service and programs to train bus drivers from area First Nation communities. Stone says the B.C. government is providing an extra $1 million to run the bus service while the federal government is contributing $1 million to fund bus shelters, lights and webcams along the route.

Mark Nielsen of The Citizen notes that Greyhound Canada "will be keeping an eye on how the provincial government's plan for public transit along Highway 16 West is rolled out and will be seeking to make adjustments accordingly, the company's senior vice president said Tuesday."  One possibility would be to seek permission from the Passenger Transportation Board to abandon passenger service along the route entirely and focus exclusively on carrying freight, said Stuart Kendrick.

Right now Greyhound offers just one return trip between Prince George and Prince Rupert each day and ridership is low. "We're struggling on that corridor with average loads of about 11 people per trip and you need double or more to be viable," Kendrick said.

Kendrick is in agreement with the B.C. Government's proposal to offer subsidized bus service along the route, but would prefer that the subsidy were given to Greyhound, or taken through an RFP (Request for Proposal) as long as Greyhound was relieved of any obligation to provide service on the route.

Back in 2012 Greyhound announced plans to significantly reduce its scheduled bus service in B.C. along the Highway of Tears to stop the company's financial growing losses. At the time Greyhound claimed it was losing an unsustainable $14.1 million a year on its scheduled passenger operations in B.C..  

Greyhound sought permission from the provincial government's Passenger Transportation Board to cut service along 15 routes around the province. Greyhound senior vice president Stuart Kendrick said at the time there was "no intention to abandon the route, just to have some flexibility to meet market demands."

In its' submission to the Passenger Transportation Board, Greyhound said the average passenger load then was just 10.48 and 11.07 and revenue per passenger mile was $2.31 and $2.25 on the two trips it wanted to eliminate between Prince George and Prince Rupert.
Break even was $5.69 per passenger mile, which usually required 35 passengers per trip, Kendrick said

Northern Health's bus service for patients who need transportation to medical appointments came under fire in Greyhound's submission to the transportation agency as the company claimed the provider takes no steps to ensure users are only passengers with a doctor's referral.

But a Northern Health spokesperson said that is not the case and Kendrick backed away from the assertion somewhat, saying Greyhound had different information when it looked into the service.

Improving public transportation along Highway 16 has been of concern to the Mayor of Smithers, B.C., Taylor Bachrach, and was one of the recommendations of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry (MWCI), which was prepared by commissioner Wally Oppal in 2012.

When the Trans Canada Highway was completed in 1962, Greyhound was granted exclusive rights to the then lucrative Calgary to Vancouver routes. Although Voyageur Colonial successfully challenged the monopoly in Court in the 1980's, no other bus company has ever operated scheduled service on the Calgary-Vancouver route.

While Greyhound predicted in 2012 that there would be no takers should the route be opened up for competition, saying that if they sustain a considerable loss operating scheduled service on the route, no other operator would be willing to risk competing for it. However, Greyhound has said that while they regularly assess our routes and customer loads per trip of these routes to determine the demand in each location, the Company would not release passenger statistics for competitive reasons.

FirstGroup Desperate For Drivers in School Bus Divsion

This is Money reports that FirstGroup is having problems hiring new drivers and retaining those it has hired in its School Bus Division in the US.

Golden hellos, free hotel accommodation and extra overtime are the banker-style packages being offered to bus drivers at First Group. The transport giant used its full-year results to warn trading would be affected by a shortage of bus drivers. First Group said it had been forced to offer a raft of incentives to attract and retain drivers at its yellow school bus operation in the United States.

The firm has 59,000 employees at 500 depots in the US and Canada. But it said that high levels of employment in Texas, Southern California, Ohio, Kansas and Massachusetts mean low demand for its part-time and seasonal work.

Chief executive Tim O’Toole has been forced to ship in workers hundreds of miles from other states and has had to put them up in hotels and also pay signing-on bonuses and extra overtime. The job is low paid and drivers are only needed at the beginning and end of the day, and only during term time. O’Toole said revenues had also been affected by the late start to the school year.

‘We have to assume the driver situation will persist,’ he said. ‘This is tied to the fact that the lower band of employment levels are at full employment,’ he added. ‘Even if we bring in drivers on higher wages, the penalty on the business will continue and will have to be paid for. We have been making cost savings to cover this.’

The transport group merged two regions together, axed 130 management roles, and combined the engineering department of its school and main transit arms. The company’s shares on the London stock exchange rose 6 per cent, or 6.2p to 109.3p after chairman Wolfhart Hauser said the dividend may be reinstated for the first time in three years.

FirstGroup Workers Launch Strike Action in Leeds and Dorset

The BBC reports that drivers at Leeds' biggest bus operator, First, are staging a second 24-hour strike. Unite members rejected a 3% pay offer tabled by First when talks were held with conciliatory service ACAS earlier this month.

Phil Brown, of Unite, said bus drivers had been "backed into a corner". "All our members are asking for is a decent pay rise," he said. "Colleagues in other parts of West Yorkshire are on over £2 more than us. "We met hoping to resolve the dispute but were offered a worse deal than we originally rejected."

Mr Brown apologised to passengers but said: "It's a last resort... but [First] is the one with the purse strings and the cash to resolve it. "We've put countless counter-proposals on the table but they won't listen."

Drivers across Dorset have also decided in favour of strike action according to the ITV news service.  

More than a hundred bus drivers across Dorset have walked out on strike. The five day strike is effecting First Wessex drivers who are angry that colleagues in places like Yeovil get more for the same job. The Unite Union says its members are angry at a 2.3 per cent pay offer from the First Group, while drivers in Bristol were given a 13 per cent increase. Nearly 90 per cent of the drivers voted in favour of strike action.

Bob Lanning, Unit Regional Officer said about the strike action, We have been negotiating since last December on a pay deal which should have started last August. Our members are fed up with the unfair and unequal treatment being meted out by the bosses year in, year out.

Talks between the union Unite which represents the drivers have not been going well according to a report in the Dorset Echo. 

Unite regional officer Bob Lanning said: "We are faced with an intolerable situation where twice in the last ten days the management have said that they would come to the table with an improved offer – and on both occasions they have not budged.

"This dispute is being pockmarked by the management’s bad faith and broken promises.
"As a result, we are calling four more days of strike action next week as our members are very angry at the management’s duplicity."

Mr Lanning added: "Unite‘s door for talks is always open, but the negotiations must be genuine from the management side.

"We know that the strikes are causing inconvenience for the travelling public – striking is the last thing our members want, but they are fed up with being the ‘poor relations’ when it comes to pay compared with other First Bus drivers in the West Country."

Marc Reddy, First Dorset managing director, said that the demands made by drivers were "simply not affordable". "It’s deeply unfortunate and frustrating that the union is taking this action, especially since our offers come on the back of pay increases in 2013 and 2014."

What Mr. Reddy failed to mention was that in 2014 the drivers made significant concessions in those contract negotiations. In those negotiations they paid for their own pay rise by agreeing to a 20% reduction in their sick pay, gave up a shift premium for working an evening shift, and agreed to do CPC courses on their own time and without pay. This is a contributing factor underlying drivers' dissatisfaction with FirstGroup..

FirstGroup Preparing to Bid on West Coast Rail Franchise

The Press and Journal reports that FirstGroup is readying itself for another battle over west coast intercity trains from Scotland to London. The Aberdeen bus and rail company confirmed yesterday it was preparing a bid to operate the services from April 2018.

It is nearly four years since FirstGroup, which runs trains in the UK and buses on both sides of the Atlantic, was stripped of the right to operate services from Glasgow to London following a legal challenge by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Rail Group (VRG). FirstGroup had been chosen to run the trains for at least 13 years and four months, but the UK Government scrapped that arrangement after flaws were found in the bid evaluation process.

Confirmation of FirstGroup’s intention to bid came yesterday, just after the company cheered investors with results showing a 7.3% rise in statutory annual profits – boosting prospects of a restored dividend.

Pre-tax profits for the year to March 31 came in at £113.5million, up from £105.8million previously. Group revenue slumped by nearly 14% to about £5.2billion in the wake of FirstGroup losing some key rail franchises, but the underlying performance was “broadly flat”. Chief Executive Tim O’Toole said a turnaround plan launched three years ago, when the company scrapped dividends following losses, was bearing fruit.

FirstGroup expects “significantly increased” cash generation in 2016/17.

First Delivers Higher Profits by Closing Depots and Stripping Costs

John Ficenec of the Telegraph reports that in the UK the bus business managed to deliver higher profits after closing depots and stripping out costs in the face of passenger volumes dragging revenue lower.

Weaker demand hit the Greyhound bus operations in the US where both revenue and profits declined.The net debt levels remained flat at £1.4bn, against £1.6bn in shareholders equity at the end of March.

Nicholas Megaw at the Financial Times put a more positive spin on the 10% jump in FirstGroup's share price stating that "...the rail and bus operator reported higher profits and a positive outlook for the year ahead — as it continues to turn itself around after losing a key UK franchise in 2012."

Revenues declined for the year due to bad weather in the UK and staff shortages in the US. Revenues fell 14% to £5,218.1m after the company lost out on several rail contracts but underlying revenues on the rest of the business was broadly flat according to Megaw.

"In North America, where the company generates the majority of its revenues, the group was affected by a lack of bus drivers and reduced passenger demand as lower fuel prices cut motoring costs. Lower oil prices and wildfires in the Canadian oil sands region, where FirstGroup provides shuttle bus services, also had a negative impact. However, Mr O’Toole said oil prices should have a more positive impact this year, thanks to new hedging arrangements for fuel."

FirstGroup released it's full year results to March of 2016 and Chairman Wolfhart Hauser indicated that over the last several years the emphasis has been on improving margins through pricing and cost efficiency programs with a view to long term sustainability as opposed to short term fixes. A part of this has been the retooling of Greyhound's entire business model.

Greyhound revenues for 2016 came in at $914 million (US) down from $986 million (US) in 2015, a decline of 7.3%. Operating profit for Greyhound fell by $14.1 million (US) from $68.5 million in 2015 to $54.4 million (US) in 2016, a decline of 20.6%.

In the US, the decrease in revenues reflected the drop in fuel prices which, while they reduce Greyhound's cost base, also improve the affordability of alternative modes of transport for some trips relative to Greyhound. Point to point Greyhound Express revenues were more resilient to the drop in fuel prices where like-for-like revenue decreased by 1.9% over the year. Like-for-like revenues decreased by 4.9% for the division as a whole. 

Greyhound Canada is of concern to FirstGroup and is identified as one of several "future priorities" going forward - "We are also determined to improve our returns in Canada, which currently mask our performance in the US." The major obstacle in Canada is identified as the Government regulatory and structural constraints affecting the market.

"Compared with our US operations, the lower oil price has had a more adverse effect on passenger demand for our services in Canada (approximately 16% of Greyhound's revenues), both directly and through the impact on the health of the economy. There are regulatory and structural constraints in this market and, despite extensive management action, Greyhound Canada was loss-making in 2015/16. We are pursuing further options to address the performance of our Canadian business."

FirstGroup intends to build and grow the "iconic" bus brand that is Greyhound based on the Bolt Bus and Express Bus business model. This translates as having free wi-fi, power outlets, leather seats, extra leg-room and guaranteed seats on all buses, and coupling that with airline style yield management, real time pricing, upgraded website, mobile apps and bus tracking technology to the larger, traditional Greyhound network.

"All of these changes complement the complex transformation of our entire pricing and ticketing business model, which has now been upgraded to give us access to algorithmic pricing and yield management tools across our entire network of 3,800 locations generating more than 50,000 different journey combinations in a typical month. Amongst other opportunities, these tools will increase our ability to stimulate demand throughout the macro-economic cycle, and allow us to shift demand to off-peak times more easily, resulting in better utilisation of existing seat inventory. This project enhances Greyhound's opportunities for growth, margin expansion and returns over the medium term."

In the coming year FirstGroup reports that Greyhound will continue to cut costs by reducing mileage by 5.8% and will continue to monitor their property portfolio to sell off assets as was done in Raleigh, Fresno and Baltimore.

WHAT IS CONCESSION BARGAINING?

It is a kind of collective bargaining in which unions surrender or give back previously gained improvements in pay and conditions in exchange for some form of job security.

Accepting concessions is no guarantee you’ll ever get back what you’ve lost – employers will fight to keep you where you are.

Accepting concessions makes it more likely the employer will ask for even more.

It is important to remember that every item that is in our collective agreement is something that bargaining teams of the past have fought hard to get and that others have fought hard to protect.

We don’t have enough worker protection or worker benefits in our collective agreement to be in a position to be “giving stuff away”.

If we concession bargain, it means that we are never negotiating a better deal, we are simply negotiating a different deal!

CUPE 1858

Revisiting the 2013 Contract Vote by ATU Local 1415

Remember that day ATU Local 1415 voted on Greyhound's first contract offer in 2013? That offer was so bad that the membership, in spectacular fashion, voted the company's offer down by 99%. Hopes ran high after that vote. After all, this was a higher percentage than voted against Greyhound's first offer in the 2010 contract negotiations where 87% voted against acceptance.

With the 99% vote against acceptance in 2013 Greyhound must have thought they were going to be in for real fight. Leading up to the vote the 2010 contract negotiations had seen some of the biggest contract concessions and giveaways in the history of ATU Local 1415.

It appeared that the membership had reached the limit for what they were prepared to accept.

In the 2010 negotiations bus drivers gave up their 4% meal allowance which was calculated based on their annual gross earnings. In addition, all members agreed to an increase in their pension contributions from 4% of gross earnings to a maximum of 9% with no change in the pension payout formulae (pension contributions quickly rose to over 8% by the end of the 1st year). All members also gave up the right to receive a commuted value payout for their pensions if they were over age 50. Annual contractual rate increases were set at 4% in the first year. 0% in the 2nd, and 2% in the final year of the contract.

In 2013, after the initial offer was rejected by 99%, Greyhound came back with another offer which created a two tier pension system by freezing the defined benefit pension plan so that new hires became members of a newly created defined contribution pension plan. The offer contained other concessions notably on compensation for the use of rental equipment, and further entrenched a two-tier wage system with new drivers starting at a drastically reduced mileage rate and taking four years instead of only two to reach the top rate. The other very unpopular give away was the drivers' GCX allowance which amounted to a lot of money for some.

The membership held their noses and voted 57% in favour of the contract.