#BusFair 🚌

https://vimeo.com/596169867

Public transport is crucial in the fight against climate change, making our cities more liveable and supporting sustainable mobility for vulnerable and low-income communities.

However bus drivers, passengers and the environment have been victims of a decades-long experiment in privatisation.

The Climate Commission has called for a doubling of public transport use nationwide, however poverty wages are making it impossible for operators to recruit new workers. Cancellations are rife, and further industrial action looms on the horizon.

The bus privatisation experiment has failed.

In July 2021 FIRST Union’s #BusFair campaign called for the Ministry of Transport to abolish the current tendering model (the “PTOM”), massively increase investment in public transport, and work together with stakeholders to bring our public transport back into public ownership.

That’s because three decades of bus privatisation has been disastrous for drivers, passengers, and the environment, shifting wealth from workers’ wages into offshore private equity firms that control our network.

The PTOM tendering model put this approach on steroids, rewarding operators with the lowest labour costs.

Significant investment is needed to lift workers’ wages, increasing the reach and regularity of our bus network, progressively reducing fares and establishing more bus-only infrastructure. However private ownership is a barrier to addressing these concerns.

Support for public ownership is now growing, with Greater Wellington Regional Council and the Green Party supporting, as well as bus drivers and passengers across the country.

Tell the Minister of Transport that it’s time to bring #ourpublictransport back into public ownership.