08:00 am, Friday 24 August, 2007

Source: Daily Telegraph

EVERY winter we’re told to consider getting a flu vaccination. Good advice, with this year’s flu season being one of the worst in recent years. Hardest hit are Sydney’s commuters.

They are currently subjected to ongoing bus service disruption due to a virulent mutation of influenza commonly known in Sydney as bus flu. This flu was thought to have originated in the Ryde STA bus depot, although some claim it is a powerful derivative of the same influenza virus that infected train drivers in 2004. Once infected, patients become incapable of driving a bus and must remain at home for at least one day, whereupon the patient may experience rapid recovery, allowing normal work duties to begin again.

The main side effect is commuters being stranded on Sydney streets waiting for bus services that are cancelled as a result. Bus flu has been hopping from bus depot to bus depot, possibly spread by visiting union officials. Having made contact with delegates in one depot, it can easily pass on to other union members in another location. This has happened so often that up to 67 members from a single bus depot have reported they have been infected by bus flu and could not perform their normal duties at work, instead having to stay at home. This resulted in Sydney commuters being stranded at bus stops as more than 200 services were cancelled over a period of two days.

This is the version of events the union and the Iemma Labor Government would have you believe. WorkCover investigators were on their way when State Transit, after initially agreeing that all drivers who failed to arrive at work on Wednesday were in fact genuinely sick, backflipped yesterday and took the union to the Industrial Relations Commission, indicating they were in dispute.

Apparently bus flu was a misdiagnosis. The real villain was that old public menace, “strike-itis”. Talk to any bus driver and they’ll quickly tell you that split rostering, allowances and wage negotiations were all in dispute for many months before bus flu began wreaking its havoc.

The public are not fools but they have been played for exactly that by the Iemma Labor Government and the union who expected commuters to swallow their implausible excuses. It’s time for Dr John Watkins to end this nonsense for the sake of long-suffering commuters who, under his care, have endured needless suffering. John Watkins needs to take responsibility for his portfolio and the delivery of bus services and sit down with all parties and get this issue sorted.

Report by Julia Alder - Do you have an OHS News Story - Let us know