Bus Éireann chief’s pay to fall by €5,000 under deal with unions

The pay of the chief executive of Bus Éireann Martin Nolan is to fall from €189,000 to €184,000 under the terms of the agreement reached at the Labour Relations Commission today to bring an end to the dispute over cost-cutting measures at the company.

Overall, executives at the State-owned transport company will have to contribute around €1 million in pay and non-pay savings as part of the deal which aims generate €5 million in reduced costs.

Executives at Bus Éireann will face cuts in pay, a longer working week and a reduction in annual leave under the terms of the agreement. Fees paid to directors at the State-owned transport company are also to be cut by 20 per cent under the terms of the deal.

The agreement says that executives will have to contribute cash savings of €300,000 as well as non-cash savings of €700,000 arising from greater productivity associated with additional hours of work and reduced holiday entitlements.

The document says that executives at the company will move back one point on their incremental pay scale. It says the working week will be extended from 36 to 39 hours from the beginning of June while self -certified sick leave will be reduced from 4 days to 3 days.

Under the agreement the cuts would remain in place for a fixed period of 19 months from June 1st next to December 31st 2014.

For drivers the new agreement on overtime rates and premium payments will be the same as those set out in the Labour Court recommendation which was rejected by staff.

This would involve overtime payments for the first two hours set at 1.25 times and 1.5 times for periods thereafter.

There would be no change to the Sunday bonus for staff rostered for normal duties.

Overtime on a Sunday would fall from double time to time to 1.5 times.

In a statement, Bus Éireann said it had struck a deal with unions on “a range of proposed cost saving measures that will help protect the future of the company, the jobs of our 2,500 employees and the 300 routes we operate around the country.”

Most services were suspended at midnight on Sunday and remained cancelled on Monday. Services resumed on Tuesday while talks got under way at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC).

The company said the proposed measures be put to the trade unions’ members and if ratified, the agreement will start on theJune 1st, lasting 19 months until January 1st, 2015.

Under the proposed agreement, according to Bus Éireann, it will no longer be implementing the Labour Court Recommendation at issue, “so the company does not anticipate any further industrial action at this time.”

It said the proposed cost saving measures agreed will deliver “at least the same level of savings as originally set out in the Labour Court agreement, which the Labour Court said were critical to ensuring the company’s viability.”

Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar and junior minister Alan Kelly have welcomed nthe agreement in principle.

Mr Varadkar said there was “a high probability” that the proposals will be ratified by a ballot of workers.

The Government's policy, he said, "has always been to protect Bus Eireann services for passengers and jobs in the company and we are very hopeful this deal, if passed by ballot by union members, will do so".

“There is a very high probability that will be the case. Really now it’s for members to ballot and I don’t want to comment further than that,” he told reporters in Dublin today.

Mr Varadkar said the agreement was a modified version of the Labour Court recommendation and that cuts to pay for company managers earning more than €100,000 per year and a volunteered 20 per reduction to board member fees were “key changes”.

Unions have said strike action by workers at the company could have been avoided if such measures had been put on the table earlier. Asked about this, Mr Varadkar said that would be “rewriting history”.

“Equally you could have said the unions could have put forward their own proposals, and in the period up until not too long ago they were saying they would never do that. That doesn’t matter now,” he said.

Separately, discussions continued yesterday at the LRC on the proposed Croke Park II agreement involving the Unite union.

The discussions are understood to have lasted some two hours, and further engagement is expected during coming days.