THE health and welfare of workers demands much more than money, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap; it requires decent living and working conditions. Living conditions, he points out, can be bought with decent wages, but working conditions are an entirely different matter and, in the bus transport sector, can have wide ranging consequences.
In the case of the bus sector, the safety of commuters and of all road users should be a priority, along with ensuring that bus drivers are adequately compensated for having to take responsibility for the lives of so many other people. Bell points out that these issues are central to the deadlocked bus transport pay and conditions negotiations that went into mediation this week.
He claims that the provisions of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act are often observed in the breach and that a major sticking point in the negotiations is the demand by employers for the introduction of “split shifts”. This would mean drivers being on duty for 16 hours, with an eight-hour break in between two shifts.
Bell maintains that this is a recipe for sleep deprivation which he regards as a major cause of industrial and road accidents. He points out that research has shown that the average driver who goes without sleep for 17 hours is as incapacitated as someone “over the limit” for alcohol consumption.
In a case, six years ago, in which a passenger train driver crashed his train into a stationary goods train, the driver was shown to have fallen asleep. He had worked seven days a week, mostly for more than 14 hours a day for months.
Bell notes that the then head of the Wits University sleep clinic, Dr Alison Bentley, told an enquiry that had it been liquor rather than sleep deprivation which had brought the driver to the state he was in at the time of the accident, he would have been dead from alcohol poisoning.
On this basis alone, Bell feels that the unions should have widespread public support, especially in their drive to ensure safe working conditions.
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