Bus driver shortage

[Hamjamwich]

In my home city the two main bus companies are First and Stagecoach. Every day on Twitter, pages of cancelled buses.
The buses were running a full schedule in lockdown. Why the driver shortage now ?

If I were them I'd have f'd off and retrained in HGVs, given the money. Maybe that?

They’ll have been poached to be HGV drivers.

A couple of weeks ago the going HGV salary was early £50k, today I saw a report that they can get £78k!

Because they are leaving to retrain as HGV drivers and earn more.

Same issue here in East Midlands town. I hadn't made the HGV link but I suppose that makes sense.

Former bus driver here.

The shortage is due to several factors, low wages and terrible conditions in the main.

Covid has rlpped through the industry, reports of driver deaths at treble the national average, 5 1/2 hours driving without access to a toilet the norm, multiple split shifts, dealing with the masks issue and zero support from the companies or the police.

If you can pass a PCV test you can pass an HGV 2 test, better money, better driving hours regulations (EU hours as opposed to UK) little interaction with the "great" British public.

Even Amazon is seen as a better job and they are hardly known as exemplary employer.

New starters round here are on just over 9 quid an hour, there are far easier jobs with much better conditions paying more than that now.

Somebody I know was a bus driver (very recently left) and it's not a job I would want to do. The pay isn't worth the abuse you have to deal with on a daily basis, the traffic issues and other road users who cannot drive safely!

They are getting rid of them because they are “too short” (or something)

It’s the same in my area. I think a lot are leaving, I keep getting adverts on my Facebook feed about recruitment days for bus drivers.

I would imagine it is also very much due to sickness levels.

When I read MN comments on how omnicrom is not all that bad because the hospital numbers are not that high it amazes me how shortsighted people are.

I know so many people who currently have covid - far, far more than at any time over the past two years. Every person with covid is a person who has to phone in sick.

This is why bus companies will be struggling. This is why schools will no doubt be closing down for certain year groups, or shutting all together.

This is why everyone needs to wear a mask in the supermarket, socially distance and also why it makes good sense to tighten up rules on crowds, especially indoors.

My db is a bus driver. Stagecoach pay very low wages, the shifts are shit and the managers haven't got a clue about how to manage people.
They employ staff as trainee drivers, tying them into a contract for a number of years (otherwise staff have to repay the costs) and receive training grants from taxpayers to bolster profits.
They also only run the most profitable routes.

Drivers move on to better companies when they are no longer tied into the trainee contract.

The reason that they have a shortage of drivers is nothing to do with covid. They were reliant on cheap labour with many workers coming from mainland Europe, they haven't yet accepted that they need to have better pay, terms and conditions as a model that relies on exploitation isn't workable any more.

My mum had a neighbour who was a bus driver. On one occasion he was beaten up late at night and the bus company gave him a week's pay leave "as a favour".

On another occasion he let a teenage girl on the bus without paying, another passenger told the bus company and he was sacked.

It doesn't smack of pleasant working conditions.

I wouldn't want to be an HGV driver but if you are happy driving for a living, it is much much better!

Covid sickness and isolation is hitting lots of places hard. We have the highest ever daily cases at the moment and as PP said, I know more people with covid right now than at any point during the pandemic (and not people who have all been in contact and caught it together).

And I’d guess people are less likely to do overtime to cover for absent colleagues because it’s Christmas, because they’re exhausted after doing it for so long, because they’re fed up of dealing with people not wearing masks, fed up of putting themselves at risk.

Recruitment and training may have been affected by 2 years of pandemic and on/off restrictions. And retaining existing drivers is hard when they can earn more money for less hassle driving lorries.