Snapshot of _Why are the UK’s bus drivers paid so much less than train drivers? Drivers at the wheel face abuse, harassment and uncomfortable conditions on £750 a week. The pay doesn’t seem to match what they can go through, as their railway counterparts — on higher salaries — go on strike_ :
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Because train drivers have an effective union and unions work to increase their members' wages. They are the single most effective force for wage growth in this country. No wonder the Tories want to undermine them at every opportunity.
Strong Unions and the fact that railway companies are effectively monopolies, which gives the train drivers a lot of leverage.They don't face any competition, so no matter how high the wages are, they can pass on this increase to the customers without the risk of going bankrupt. The demand for train travel is significantly inelastic, people need to commute everyday, and there are no viable alternatives.
In many other industries, a big increase in labour costs can literally ruin a company, as it might make it less competitive.
> The demand for train travel is significantly inelastic, people need to commute everyday, and there are no viable alternatives.
And partly this is because busses are designed mostly for poor people (yes, I know they shouldn't be, but that's how busses are seen and provided in most of the country) and are almost always going to be strictly worse than cars.
But they don't usually offer the same service, i.e. commuting time can increase significantly, making these alternatives unviable.
Bus travel is way slower than the equivalent train journey, for example. Driving is not even an option for most of the people who work in London (petrol, parking, ULEZ charge, taxes, insurance, actually owning a car...).
Why hasn't the RMT had the same level of success in its other sectors then? How did it let the P&O farce go ahead? The RMT itself even represents bus drivers in some places.
And how haven't all the other unions managed to learn from the RMT and Aslef if it's 100% down to the unions?
They might have strong unions, but there are other factors at play that gets salaries so high. The franchise system has pushed up salaries, as well as the likes of how long it takes a firm to hire and train a driver.
P&O manipulated the fire and rehire rules, aided and abbeted by the British govermnent, who allowed the downplaying of Trade Union recognition agreements, and exploited different contractual laws and practices in the shipping sector. If we had a decent government, fire and rehire would be outlawed outright as the crass exploitation tool that it is; for all concerned. Effectively, P&O broke the law.
That's true.
But if the successes for railway members are 100% down to RMT and Aslef despite the government also 'aiding and abetting' TOCs, it would be reasonable to expect the RMT to be able to achieve something for members elsewhere. But in the P&O case that didn't happen.
RMT asked for crew to be reinstated which didn't happen.
They could've also taken civil action on behalf of members if the members agreed. But only one crew member (who does actually appear to be a RMT member) didn't sign up for the settlement and NDA offered by P&O, so they couldn't convince their members to do that.
RMT couldn't even improve the offered settlement.
There are very high standards for a train driver because the consequences of a mistake (passing a signal at danger, travelling too quickly for instance) are extremely serious - possibly resulting in the death and injury of hundreds.
In most cases, a bus crash won’t kill anyone in the bus because it will happen at below 30 mph. There’s a risk to pedestrians and cyclists, but that’s usually just one individual, so the overall consequence of an error is seen as much lower.
So it’s completely understandable as to why it is difficult to find train drivers.
It's not difficult to find them - the entry requirements are low every single time a role is advertised it gets thousands of applications.
No TOC has ever said they can't find candidates or can't get enough people through the interview and assessment process.
The problem for TOCs is that they need to pay a trainee for sometimes up to 2 years, plus pay all the costs involved in hiring them, before they can actually be let out on their own.
So they just fought each other for the already qualified drivers instead, pushing up wages.
We’re not disagreeing! TOCs don’t want to risk 2yrs of a candidate’s training when they can just be poached immediately by any other company (or they might fail training or change their mind.) They’ve worked out at the moment it is cheaper to just poach from other companies. Train drivers are paid well because the standards are so much higher than bus drivers.
A similar issue exists with airline pilots, very few airlines offer funded training schemes any more because it is too easy to just poach the trained first officer afterwards. They usually work on a student loan type basis (but a private scheme) or are fully funded by the student, at ca. £100k for a commercial pilot.
So a friend of mine who became a pilot a few years back (just pre-COVID) had his training funded by the airline, but the arrangement was apparently that he becomes liable for the cost if he leaves to work for another airline within X years (I think it was 4 years). Makes sense, and pay seems to go up considerably around that mark anyway, so it's effectively a loan.
Yeah. The way these schemes work is you’re paid £40k or so for a few years and £20k of your salary is hidden - used to pay back the loan. The company usually does something like if you do four years they’ll write 20% off or whatever it happens to be. But the loan agreement is separate - you’re liable for it if you quit being a pilot, leave training or fail final exams - and often there’s a significant deposit required too (£10-20k). It is definitely a career that is really hard to get into as an ordinary person though they do occasionally offer bursaries and the like.
Too strong unions = destroyed industry.
E.g. British Leyland etc. Restrictive practices, refusal of new technology because it 'costs jobs', etc etc.
There has to be a balance.
Completely ignoring all the other factors that contributed to their collapse. The oil crisis, the company wasting money on concepts that never went anywhere, inflation, and declining sales because of bad management and terrible marketing all played a bigger role.
It is almost 0% the reason. The main reason is that driving a train takes way more training, the consequences of a mistake are far more serious, and there are way fewer train drivers than bus drivers.
It's always going to be somewhat higher as driving on roads is something most adults can do so converting over to a PSV license is far easier whereas rail knowledge is something you only get in the job.
Does it?
They generally have more people on board than a typical airbus, why would you not have only the best of the best at the controls? Training for pilots is extremely difficult and generally extremely expensive, train driving by comparison is easy to get into
For every driver job there is a thousand people that want it, they can set the standards to only accept the best people. It is why our railway network is one of the safest in the world.
> more people on board than a typical airbus,
Those people are not flying above the ground at hundreds of miles an hour in a complex machine with complex navigation, meteorological and communication requirements. The relative simplicity of rail is a huge feature. Not sure if that has any consequences on training or salary but still.
But on the other hand, a typical wide body jet captain has a first officer plus a dozen crew to help them out with any safety issues with the passengers. A train driver in some cases may be the only member of rail staff on board with 500+ people on their train.
> They generally have more people on board than a typical airbus
They generally don't. Outside of rush hours, most trains are well under-capacity. Much of the network outside SE England is also made up or 2 or 3 car services that have a capacity of a couple of hundred people. While airline load factors are often well above 90%.
A train driver can't turn all the safety systems off and drive completely manually like a pilot can. A plane can't automatically be brought to a halt if the pilot is flying it too fast or it goes somewhere it shouldn't go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-high-speed-rail-development-worldwide
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/28/british-trains-up-to-four-times-slower-outside-south-east-research
The data does not mention that the reason the max speed is 300km/h is due to the channel tunnel (HS1). Other than that, most lines are limited to 200km/h which would be the slowest in the table. Again, that is theoretical. Not only are we slower theoretically but we are slower due to line faults, congestion etc.
Post the channel tunnel there is also a decent chunk of 140mph track, which would also not be the slowest in the table.
The table you have linked doesn't put the UK at the bottom, or particularly near it.
You can't back up your statement with evidence that contradicts what you said.
>They generally have more people on board than a typical airbus, why would you not have only the best of the best at the controls?
Number of people on board is not the only determinant of how much of a barrier is necessary. Also relevant is how complex the thing you're doing is.
> It is why our railway network is one of the safest in the world.
There does need to be a trade off considered at some point though - if the safety comes at too high costs, which forces people onto the much more dangerous roads (through higher fares) it can end up being a net negative for society
Per passenger kilometre, staff costs are the single biggest category of expenditure across the rail network.
Merseyrail, Northern, TfW, Scotrail spend more on wages than they earn in fares per passenger km.
This is an unforeseen consequence of privatisation. Before privatisation, you could join BR (or London Transport) as a school leaver in a junior grade. If you wanted to become a driver, you would then spend some years learning and studying all the aspects needed to become a driver, and then take relatively short courses and practical assessments when an opening became available. There was always a large pool.
When BR was privatised, and various elements were outsourced, that old hierarchy was broken up. The TOCs had to employ new drivers directly and the old training paths ceased to exist. The TOCs found themselves having to bump up pay if they wanted to recruit drivers who were already qualified. Furthermore, drivers now have to acquire the relevant knowledge in intensive courses of a few months, rather than gradually learning things over years.
From my experience as an ex bus and now train driver, the turn over off staff at bus companies is far far higher than rail companies. A lot of bus drivers didn’t join the union because they weren’t planning on staying very long. The job is very poor pay for the amount of responsibility that you have. After 6.5 years I honestly couldn’t get out of there fast enough, which is a shame because I enjoyed the job when I started.
More fragmented operation must also play a role. There are hundreds of bus companies, and it's not as much of a natural monopoly. Any random person can set up a bus company with a relatively small investment.
Meanwhile, there are only maybe 10-20 companies operating trains. Much easier to have a strong union with a more concentrated workforce.
The vast majority of bus services are operated by Stagecoach, First, Arriva, Mobico and Go-Ahead.
The bus industry is more consolidated than the rail one is.
I've no real idea, but I imagine it's easier to train up a bus driver than a train driver. All you need for a bus driver is a bus (which can be driven on public roads damned near anywhere) and a trainer. Applicants will also already be familiar with driving a car.
Driving a train though? That's gotta require a different set up. There's far less rail infrastructure to train on, and that network is probably far more sensitive to/less tolerant of trainee causing a slight delay.
Mostly, but there was a few reasons.
1. Constantly fighting the traffic every day
2. Horrible people using the bus, but 99% of users were absolutely fine
3. All the nice routes into the countryside got cut so I spent more time sat in city traffic
4. The newest buses we had (street lights for any other bus drivers here) were horrible to drive
5. Split shifts
It's only really ASLEF that are the strong union. RMT is a bit toothless.
I used to work in railway (rolling stock - ie train) maintenance. The guys in my depot had done a 4 year apprenticeship to become a technician. They were just as responsible for safety as the drivers / signallers (just look at the number of railway accidents caused by maintenance staff) but there are many many fewer safeguards in place to stop them from fucking up. The guys I worked with were great, and their knowledge and training kept the railway safe.
Compare that to train drivers. It's a 12 week course to go from walking off the street to driving a train. Any signal that can cause a major issue is protected by various systems to prevent that issue.
But yet, train drivers are paid significantly more than fitters. When the annual salary increases are announced, the drivers get the lions share. Then the guards. Then the techs. Then the station staff. Then the managers - heads of quite major departments are paid less than train drivers; and similarly driver managers are getting paid more than the chartered engineers who're managing the maintenance departments.
The number of technicians, whose apprenticeships were paid for by the railway, and a couple of senior managers who moved to driving trains was staggering. They left for an easier life and better pay. It's a ridiculous situation, IMO.
I was going to say, this article's snide headline implying that train drivers shouldn't strike because bus drivers are paid less is clear capitalist influence
If an effective union tried this with low-end hospitality they'd pretty quickly find the industry to be a lot smaller and the wages not to rise very much. Same with fruit-picking, etc, that competes with imports. Effective unions can't go further than the price-setting power of / political will to fund their industry can. For the rail industry that's more than many.
You are probably right for seasonal hospitality work. Fruit picking I'm not so sure. There is a possible future where investment and innovation in better fruit picking technology leads to fewer but much more productive and higher skilled jobs. Unions definitely have a role in ensuring that the benefits of automation are more evenly distributed.
Tbf tho the union has failed recently to get a preety good pay rise so they have just been striking for a couple of years with the gov refusing to budge
From what I know about the RMT and people trying to get a job on the railways, you are up against a lot of nepotism, literally had stories of a station ticket office staff trying to pass a job to a relative on retirement (at one of the prime stations with few customers)
the 'comrades' are basically aristocrats with a red flag
Training a train driver takes a year or more and they are trained for specific routes so it is exceptionally difficult to bring in replacement if they go on strike, and if the train companies don't run the trains they are contracted to do they get fined by the government.
Training a bus driver takes weeks and there are lots of bus drivers around and you can simply hire one to drive the bus that the striking driver won't, and if the bus companies don't run the buses the government doesn't care.
The unions do play a role, but the role they play is exploiting the scarcity and power of their members, scarcity and power that bus drivers (and people in most other areas) don't have.
I know this isn't the case everywhere but around me the bus drivers have to have special training to be able to drive the bus through Menai bridge and the walls of Conwy town as there is literally half an inch space each side of the bus, blows my mind everytime they manage it. They still get paid shit.
Yeah surely its a lot more skill to drive a specific route in a bus with traffic
What's special about any train route that requires any skill from the train driver? I must be missing something about moving trains because I thought they were on tracks and you could just go backwards and forwards on the tracks
Any road vehicle is driven almost entirely on the basis of what can be seen around it. You can't do that with a train – whether you need to slow down for a speed restriction on a sharp curve, for a signal at danger or to stop at a station, it's usually far too late by the time it comes into view. Route knowledge is everything, but so are the non-technical skills that retain focus and situational/geographical awareness when you can legitimately drive for miles with very little to do but virtually no cues to get you back into the room when you do need to do something.
It's not just knowing where you are and where stations are, either. Which platforms do you fit into at a given station? Which route indications from each signal must you refuse, if offered, as you can't get to your planned destination that way? What are the speeds over all the crossovers and connections in a complex layout?
This is all underpinned by extensive rules training, though, and 95% of what we know relates to the 5% of times when things aren't routine. You can't just pull over to the side of the road to wait for a man in a van to come and fix a fault, or evacuate passengers onto the kerbside in a breakdown or emergency, and things like infrastructure faults and engineering work involve a lot more than just obeying a set of temporary traffic lights.
Someone posted a wall of text of things a train driver has to do and its all just 'remembering where stuff is' and no skill required, all memorisation
Bus drivers should be getting paid more money than them really
>have special training to be able to drive the bus through Menai bridge and the walls of Conwy town as there is literally half an inch space each side of the bus
Sounds easy enough. I have to get through a similar gap at work every morning. I've only hit the wall twice and I don't even have a driving license!
The difference is in the rarity of those skills AND that the government will penalise their employer if they don't run the services.
Any unionised group with a rare skill can force their employer to pay more, especially if the government or public with influence demand those services be provided.
But a unionised group with a common skill delivering a service that the government doesn't care about, and that the pubic who rely on that service having no influence...
> The difference is in the rarity of those skill
This. There's a huge pool of potential workers who can drive a car or van, and while you can't just hop into a bus and it be identical, there are transferable skills. I can't imagine any bus company would take me on and train me up as a non-driver, because there's so many candidates part way there.
Who other than train drivers have any experience driving trains? You're basically down to fans of train simulator at that point. Every new worker starts at nothing, and unless train companies are going to train a surplus of drivers willing to undercut each other, then the skills will always be in short demand.
The unions also work to keep the barrier to entry high to ensure the qualified pool remains small. It's in the union's interest to require x, y and z certifications to do a job as that means their members can't be replaced at short notice. It also makes employers want to minimise turnover as they've invested so much in training. There are obvious benefits in safety (both for staff and the general public) as a result but when the unions make these arguments it's often with more than one objective.
This really isn't the case. The barrier to entry is *justifiably* high. Ladbroke Grove is the perfect example of what happens when you try to cut corners in this respect.
I agree that safety is a core motivation and the barriers are entirely justifiable, but there are also the protectionist benefits that come along with stringent certification requirements. One does not invalidate the other and a safety argument is the perfect vehicle to improve worker protections.
They have a rarity of skills but exploiting that power comes with risk.
When train drivers go on an all out strike then although people can't get anywhere and are deeply inconvenienced, most go 'up the workers' and support them.
If say hospital doctors went on an all out strike and let people die, then I rather suspect they wouldn't get an awful lot of support from the public.
Therefore their ability to take industrial action is limited to somewhere between making things a bit awkward and not letting people suffer too much.
I don't think you can compare modern emigration to Australia by medical professionals seeking a decent life in relation to their skillset and workload to convict transportation by 3 month voyage on a ship with a high death rate en route. But ok.
It's such a shame, that should be a reason to ensure they always get paid in line with inflation as you can't risk them going on strike but that doesn't happen.
Because NHS workers work for the government and in this country health is more or less a government run monopoly. That means it is the government that sets the price of the labour market and not the market itself.
If there was a mixed public/private provision for health then the NHS workers could move between multiple providers to increase their pay leverage. You do see a little of this at an international level, many Doctors and Nurses emigrate to other countries where the pay and conditions are much better, but since this is an option unavailable to most people then it results in continually depressed wages.
The mad thing is, the Gov pay the train companies for lost earnings while the strikes happen.
Crucially though, the train operators still get paid when workers are on strike, receiving compensation for lost revenue of £20m-£25m a day.
https://news.sky.com/story/train-strikes-why-the-numbers-dont-add-up-to-a-rail-deal-12781077
That's the problem though - they do pass it on. You pay the workers more, they go out into the economy and they spend that money, they drive more demand which creates more jobs and higher wages and before you know it you've got a higly productive thriving economy and we can't have that.
It gets even worse though! Those highly paid bus drives force the bus companies to focus on finding more efficient routes and services driving up efficiency and creating a much more effective transport system. Before you know it we've taken a load of highly polluting diesel cars off the road, everyone is taking the new efficient bus services and we can't find anyone to fill up those car parks in the centre of town.
Nah this is partially true. While higher salaries might increase productivity, we have a supply side issue in the UK. We don't and can't produce enough of what we need, being an island. And we've historically relied on imports and other not so friendly routes to suffice our needs. Now with exiting the common market, without any proper alternative free trade market, we're facing less supply with the same demand. Putting more money in the hands of people would only drive up inflation.
For example, supposedly there are 20 aubergines in the market and everyone has £1 to spend, the aubergine would be priced at £1.
Without bringing more aubergines into the market, if we give everyone £2, it'll only mean that the same people wait for the same aubergines just with more money to spend on it. Means the aubergine would just go up to £2.
Higher wages don't increase productivity in this case since it leads to an inflation spiral without fixing the supply issue and inflation eats up the power of the new salary before it could drive growth. And people would strike again.
The Tories fucked up bad but we fucked up worse with self inflicting Brexit. :'(
Or supply goes down, prices go up and many people now can’t afford what they used to purchase, their standard of living decreases and they start saving, meaning less money in the economy and the economy starts to retract
Those bus companies now can’t afford the pay rises, and they’re not raking in enough from ticket revenue so they have to make cuts to their services to find savings otherwise face going out of business entirely.
Before you know it, we’ve added a load of ‘highly’ polluting diesel cars onto the road and the town centre is booming because people can go wherever they want, whenever they want.
If everyone is paid too little then everyone is paid correctly.
It's impossible for everyone to be paid too little. Wages and spending power are relative.
This is the most ass backwards take I’ve seen.
Let’s take an example. If everyone is paid poverty wages, then it’s right?
The issue here is that the vast majority are underpaid, and those in positions of power exploit this to further their wealth at the expense of the rest of us
How does the cool aid taste?
There are factors beyond wage level that impact effective spending power. If 99% of wages grow slowly for 20 years but rent and utilities grow rapidly over the same period then its very easy to see how essentially everyone's wages could be too low. Especially if that period also witnessed record profits for companies and record growth in remuneration for C-suite executives.
Going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I don't think £750 per week is actually a bad salary for people who are doing a fairly unskilled job like driving a bus – no comparison to train drivers who are actually surprisingly skilled at their jobs, as they have a lot more to contend with and need a far greater knowledge about the vehicle, in addition to the rail network that they use.
Lots of people suggesting that bus drivers should strike for better pay, it seems like a solid plan with one minor drawback.
Outside of London where buses are regulated they're so unreliable that many simply wouldn't notice.
The bus drivers up here actually went on strike towards the end of last year. They eventually ended up accepting a deal that to my eyes wasn't much better than what they were offered in the first place.
All correct. I am a bus driver (<1 year) and on a full time contract I make around £415 after deductions a week (42 hours a week) The busses are shit, cold and damp and break down often which ends in dealing with irate passengers.
My training was three weeks in the academy (CPC then practical test) followed by 7 shifts of route learning.
Also the shifts are horrendous, no paid breaks means I could be out of my house for 10 hours and paid for only 8. We have a union and are currently negotiating a higher pay.
Also on top of this there seems a view that bus drivers are stupid. Had a confrontation with a student with this view who shut right up when I told him I had an honours degree in biomedical science.
https://twitter.com/Chris_TheDriver/status/1540380411964129287?t=coI3S5-dx4cmB0gLaE5TbQ&s=19
This guy describes the train driver recruitment and training process in great detail here. Gives some indication of what drivers ACTUALLY go through to get where they are.
Because most people can drive a car, so learning to drive a bus from there is pretty straightforward. The barrier to entry and training requirements to drive a train instead is much more complicated. I'm more surprised a supposed journalists can't figure out that for themselves and instead write an article about it.
It is not a race to the bottom, don't fall for media hype!
Don't be jealous that train drivers, and the others they don't talk about that are also part of the union, are striking for better conditions.
Instead join with them and expand the stake!
The greatest shame of the strikes of the last few years wis that there has been no call.for a general strike - cause only then will the government be forced to do something other than grandstand.
Because in Britain you aren’t paid what you deserve, but what it would cost to replace you with immigrant labour.
The only exceptions to the above are those who still have trade unions and a decent bargaining position.
It doesn't have to be immigrant labour and it's not exclusive to Britain. In a neoliberal system your pay is determined by how replaceable you are coupled with your ability to negotiate.
Strikes are a symptom of that system. If we gave workers more effective power to get better wages we wouldn't have strikes but we'd also have higher paid workers across the country and that would be bad for the shareholders. Always remember, Britain doesn't belong to the people who live and work in Britain, it brings to the people who own shares in Britain.
I think you're missing a point: there is no "enough wage". You always want more.
The second point is. Wages are paid in prices. Higher wages usually means higher prices.
Two decades of uncontrolled net migration with stagnant wage growth and no increases in productivity.
The reason why economists and the chattering classes don’t have any evidence is because they don’t work in those jobs under the threat of being replaced.
Farmers would literally prefer their fields of crops to be composted rather than paying the price required to get British workers to do the job.
For whole industries, the goal is not to offer a salary competitive for a long term future, it is to attract new economic migrants willing to work for a wage below what the job is worth to live a decent life.
>Farmers would literally prefer their fields of crops to be composted rather than paying the price required to get British workers to do the job.
because British consumers have absolutely no interest in paying the sums required for farmers to employ British workers like that. because supermarkets will simply buy the produce from a cheaper country if prices go up to offset needing to pay British workers enough to entice them into a thankless profession like farming that is a) very seasonal b) requires you to give up a lot of comforts of modern life. Why underplay that?
I see this as an issue of responsibility.
A minor bump or accident in a bus is no big deal in the scheme of things.
There are no minor train accidents.
You mess up in a train and there is the potential for mass fatalities.
Having said that, I agree bus drivers are seriously underpaid.
Trains can have minor accidents too. Sure, some are high speed high fatality ones (very rare though) - but it’s not like buses don’t crash on motorways too.
Trains also have all sorts of safety systems built in - buses have none.
It would be interesting to see what tram drivers are paid - arguably all of the safety issues of the railway with all the of the traffic risk and passenger dealings of buses. If they’re not paid the most, then the pay probably isn’t just about responsibility.
find some group paid less than another group who are better paid and are striking for better pay/conditions and pit them against each other.
The go to right whinge tactic.
This is an absurd comparison.
It takes about 2 years to train a train driver, and it costs about a hundred grand. It takes 6 weeks to train a bus driver, and costs about a grand.
One is a properly difficult skill bearing a tonne of responsibility, the other is an augmented driving license.
You don't get paid more for having uncomfortable conditions, you get paid more for having an in demand skill set. Train drivers have also used the unions well to improve their conditions.
It doesn't take two years, it should take a year to 18 months to have a driver that is passed out and competent. It also doesn't cost 100k, the figures do differ depending on which TOC they're training at as you have to factor in the wages of the guys training them, though generally TOCs like to do this on services that have passengers on, so you're not running a very expensive train up and down the mainline empty.
Northern do run empty stock to train drivers, however, they also have one of the quicker driver training operations. They don't pay their drivers anywhere near 100k so you don't have to factor in the wage of the trainer so much.
Well there's running the trainee train driver around in an empty train while they train.
For instance, [Great Central](https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2024/01/great-central-railway-acquires-two-class-153s-for-driver-training.html) acquired two class 153s for driver training, delivered last December. Those trains require maintenance and fuel, plus Great Central will want paying for the use of their track for driver training.
Firstly, the training is typically between a year and eighteen months.
There are different sections in the training.
Rules - you must learn the extensive rule book completely. There are lots of rules and they’re all relevant and important. There is an exam at the end of your rules course which you must pass.
Traction - you need to learn all about each type of train you drive, because if there is a fault and you’re in the middle of nowhere, you will be required to fault find and know where equipment and isolation cocks/MCBs are to get you moving again, if possible. If safety systems need to be isolated, this is where specific rules come in. There is an exam at the end of each traction course that you must pass.
Practical handling - spending at least 250 hours driving with a driver instructor. This teaches technique and also builds up your route knowledge. Some TOCs expect drivers to learn all of their route knowledge during practical handling, others will expect them to learn a core route only and will do the rest of their route learning when they are qualified. Usually at this point you will be driving trains that are in service, with passengers on board.
Route knowledge - what do I mean when I talk about route knowledge? You have to know the route you drive in fine detail. You have to know where every signal is, where every station is, where every change of maximum line speed it, how long the platforms are at each station, where to apply your brakes to stop at each station depending on the weather/railhead conditions, where any route/junction indicator will tell you, what speed you are allowed to go over specific points at, etc. You also have to be able to know and do all of these things at night when there is no light and in thick fog.
At the end of your 250 hours, you will have a final exam that re-tests your retention of the rules and traction knowledge, as well as assessing your adherence to the professional driving policy along with your route knowledge. This process normally takes between one and two weeks and you cannot make one single mistake.
But, sure, it’s just backwards and forwards.
You know what, it really can’t. It could be simplified, it would have been. The last company to try to cut training down to half the time were found to be partly responsible for the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster, because of inadequate training and experience. There have been plenty of innovations and advancements in training and our understanding of how people learn, but the basic training structure remains the same - because it is robust, it works and it arms trainee drivers with the knowledge and skills they need to do their job in all circumstances.
I’ve been training drivers to drive trains for nearly twenty years. What is your expertise in this field?
Yea, I bet being a bus driver sucks sometimes.
Gunna make an actual guess at why pay is lower than train drivers though... Almost everyone can drive a car, which means you could also drive a bus with very little training as the skills are the same. Almost everyone I know can drive a car, and I don't know anyone who can drive a train. Driving a train would require more dedicated training to make you qualified.
I don't know anything about either as I've never driven a bus or a train. But that would be my first guess for why the pay is different.
It’s an interesting question about how we should pay people. We tend to do it based on supply and demand for labour, but you could argue that we *should* do it based on the stress of the job (which seems to be what the article is arguing) or the productivity of the individual (which relates to demand for labour).
In terms of productivity, a train travels further per hour because it’s faster and the largest trains carry 10 times more people than the largest buses. This suggests that train drivers should be paid a lot more than bus drivers.
Stress is factored into supply & demand.
If the job is so stressful that they can't get enough people to do it, they pay more and suddenly people are willing to do highly stressful jobs.
It should be based on how useful a job is for society, but we do the opposite.
Teachers get a pittance. Data scientists working for a gambling shop make a fortune.
Is this written out of genuine concern for badly treated bus drivers or is it really just a way of attacking and turning people against train drivers?
I suspect it's the latter.
Trains require more training and more responsibility. Same reason we pay pilots more. Why are they implying these jobs should be paid based on conditions? If that was true sales staff at the front line of the supermarket would be paid more then the head office staff in a comfy boardroom. Or journalists who have to go out and deal with people more then editors who stay inside and just read what the journalists do...
Pay is mostly based on what it would cost to replace you. Easier to find people to drive a bus, less so to find people to drive a train.
This article is a poorly disguised "train drivers make too much" hit piece.
Hello, I've been a train driver for 12 years and worked for two different operators. If anyone has any questions I promise to answer them transparently and honestly.
Is driving a train harder than driving a bus?
It seems to me that driving a bus is more challenging. It’s a large vehicle in narrow roads, contending with unpredictable cyclists/pedestrians, you have a tight schedule despite traffic jams etc. A train is on a rail track, so less hazards than on the road where there are so many factors.
Feel free to correct me
> Why are the UK’s bus drivers paid so much less than train drivers? ...their railway counterparts — on higher salaries — go on strike
Quite the puzzle, eh?
The question people need to ask when it comes to this article is how come someone who was in such an easy job such as a train driver left it for a poorly paid job as a bus driver? If it is that easy and that well paid why didn’t they stay in the well paid job? I’m just guessing that it wasn’t that easy after all
>Why are the UK’s bus drivers paid so much less than train drivers?
A train driver can bring a train to a halt at a station inch perfect so that the train doors align with the edge of the platform. Time and time again.
If a bus driver drove a train then only sometimes the train would stop in alignment with the platform. Sometimes half the train would overshoot the platform. Sometimes the train would stop 200 metres short of the station. Sometimes the train might not even stop at the station.
Have you ever caught a bus in a city?
Assuming that you're standing level with the bus stop only sometimes will you have the bus stop by the bus stop. Sometimes you have three buses stopping together and have to dash the length of the two preceding buses to catch the third bus.
Unlike a bus driver, a train driver can't just 'take a chance' and speed through a red light or fly past an amber light.
Being a train driver isn't just sitting in a cab at the front of a train and 'pushing buttons'. You're in charge of a moving vehicle with many hundreds of passengers, often moving at very high speeds if we consider long distance intercity trains, and you have to be alert and on the ball all the time.
I get that bus drivers also have to deal with a lot of shit, I'm not saying that driving a bus is an easy job, but surely you understand that driving a train is as different from driving a bus as is flying a plane.
As my partner's Dad - a driver of most trucks imaginable, including STGO exceptional loads, for over 40 years - says, "Do they turn right? Do they turn left? Do they go in reverse? Do they fuck."
On the contrary, we do turn left and we do turn right. We have no choice in the matter, either. If you're in a road vehicle and about to miss your turning, it's not the end of the world. If we're still doing 100mph approaching a 15mph crossover, it's going to make a tremendous mess.
Freight drivers routinely propel trains (i.e. reverse) anything up to ½ mile long...
Let’s be real, driving a train is far more technically complex than a bus.
You crash a bus and worst case scenario maybe 10 people die.
You crash a train and potentially 500 people dead.
It’s not comparable.
Apes. Together. Strong.
While I appreciate the Tory press attempt at turning the public against the 'greedy' train drivers, this just highlights what bus drivers should be doing
To no one’s surprise, the train drivers are on strike again. As Aslef’s series of walkouts rolls into its 22nd month, it has come to seem like a permanent state of affairs.
But while train drivers will be joining well-worn picket lines, bus drivers will be going full steam ahead. Despite a smattering of regional disputes, they hardly ever strike. A typical train driver earns £64,000 a year. Bus drivers on the other hand? An average of £29,000 a year.
This contrast has started to raise some eyebrows, not least among Sunday Times readers. Last week, a bemused Mr Roger France of Telford wrote to this newspaper remarking on the disparity. Are train drivers paid too much, or bus drivers too little — and is driving a train really more than twice as hard as driving a bus? Why do we hear so much from one group and hardly anything from the other?
The obvious answer is that driving a train is more demanding than a bus. In reality, it might actually be the other way around.
One man who’s well placed to judge the difference is Steve Russell: he’s done both.
“Driving a bus was very stressful,” says Russell, 67, who was based in London’s Fulwell garage for two years. “No one will let you out, you’re constantly being cut up, motorcycles think it’s funny to do wheelies in front of you. It’s hard. It’s harrowing.
“There are other things too. There aren’t toilets at the end of all the routes, so you really had to plan ahead with how much you could drink: sometimes it was like torture when you needed to take a leak. And the pay wasn’t that good: in 2019 I was earning about £13 an hour. No wonder there was a high staff turnover. The drivers are treated like cannon fodder.”
Russell’s nine years driving for what is now South Western Railway were very different. “The job was great,” he says. “There’s no cars in front of you, no traffic lights: you have signals, but they’re there to protect you, not slow you down. And you know there’s always a loo.”
The bar to becoming a train driver is of course higher. “There is a lot more training to become a train driver — nearly a year in my case, against a couple of months for the buses. So there’s a greater sense of professionalism. But after that it’s a very easy job to do — much less stressful than being on the roads, and the money’s much better.”
In terms of the market, Nikolas Thomopoulos, associate professor of transport at the University of Surrey, says train drivers earn more because of simple supply and demand.
“Bus driving in the UK requires only slightly more than a basic driving licence, and training is relatively short,” he says, “which is why it is often the first job of newly arrived immigrants. Given the high supply of bus drivers, their salary is quite low. But train driving is, quite rightly, heavily regulated because of the strict safety requirements … and trade unions perhaps play their role too.”
Economics aside, there’s another key difference between the jobs: the public. Train drivers have almost no contact with them: for bus drivers, it’s constant — and sometimes traumatic.
“Joe”, who asked to have his name changed for fear of repercussions from his employer, has been driving in southeast London for decades. “Just two weeks ago, a passenger was abusing some girls, saying bad words to them,” he recalls. “I intervened and he said, ‘Where are you from?’ I said that had nothing to do with it. So he said, ‘You are a f***ing Muslim, aren’t you?’” On that occasion, the abuser was arrested, but most incidents go unreported.
Racism and abuse is a common story among bus drivers. A new survey from the union Unite found that 82 per cent of bus drivers were abused in 2023, both verbally and physically. Among the thousands of incidents, a Stagecoach driver in Yorkshire told of physical assault and robbery; a Lothian driver in Scotland faced racist taunts; an Arriva driver in Wales was spat at.
Some abuse occurs when passengers avoid or refuse to pay their fare. Joe wasn’t the only bus driver to tell us that, even though London bus drivers were three times more likely to die of Covid, the pandemic did make some aspects of the job easier. “For two years we didn’t charge any money, and it was a lot less stressful,” he says.
He also thinks that the stress of driving itself is getting worse. “The companies are putting pressure on,” he says. He points to the new iBus monitor installed in vehicles — an onboard computer which tracks the bus’s position. “You must be a maximum of two minutes late or early at every stop. They’re constantly monitoring you, marking you.”
Joe’s length of service and chosen hours mean he earns more than many, but even so, he reckons he makes less than £750 for a 38-hour week — hardly a fortune, given the stress, the abuse and the customer vomit that is a regular feature of night shifts.
Despite this, he exudes a certain serenity. “I tell the young ones, you have to learn to cope with it. I have my shed and many hobbies — I am a sports coach, I grow my plants. Work can be difficult, but I have a full life.”
Are bus drivers such as Joe unsung heroes, paid too little for the harassment and stress they endure? Readers will draw their own conclusions. Meanwhile, the train drivers’ dispute will rumble on.
Even some nurses don't get paid 3k a month wtf!? I know for a fact which deserves to be paid more, my Dad's a bus driver and scoffed at this, guessing London means UK now?
This has always been the way. When I lived in London (early 2000s) the bus drivers made £16k and the train drivers £30k - had just started my career and wondering why a train driver made so much more….
Train Drivers also face abuse, harassment and uncomfortable conditions. Just because there are high salaries doesn’t mean they live in a land of milk and honey!
Snapshot of _Why are the UK’s bus drivers paid so much less than train drivers? Drivers at the wheel face abuse, harassment and uncomfortable conditions on £750 a week. The pay doesn’t seem to match what they can go through, as their railway counterparts — on higher salaries — go on strike_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-much-bus-driver-pay-strikes-trains-mgfcr8md3) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-much-bus-driver-pay-strikes-trains-mgfcr8md3) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because train drivers have an effective union and unions work to increase their members' wages. They are the single most effective force for wage growth in this country. No wonder the Tories want to undermine them at every opportunity.
This is 100% the reason. Strong unions = better pay.
Strong Unions and the fact that railway companies are effectively monopolies, which gives the train drivers a lot of leverage.They don't face any competition, so no matter how high the wages are, they can pass on this increase to the customers without the risk of going bankrupt. The demand for train travel is significantly inelastic, people need to commute everyday, and there are no viable alternatives. In many other industries, a big increase in labour costs can literally ruin a company, as it might make it less competitive.
Yes, London basically grinds to a halt without trains running in and out. Bus drivers don't have that same leverage.
> The demand for train travel is significantly inelastic, people need to commute everyday, and there are no viable alternatives. And partly this is because busses are designed mostly for poor people (yes, I know they shouldn't be, but that's how busses are seen and provided in most of the country) and are almost always going to be strictly worse than cars.
Also they're on the road, where cars can also go. Trains have their own infrastructure which the public can't also use.
>They don't face any competition People have alternative modes of transport.
But they don't usually offer the same service, i.e. commuting time can increase significantly, making these alternatives unviable. Bus travel is way slower than the equivalent train journey, for example. Driving is not even an option for most of the people who work in London (petrol, parking, ULEZ charge, taxes, insurance, actually owning a car...).
Why hasn't the RMT had the same level of success in its other sectors then? How did it let the P&O farce go ahead? The RMT itself even represents bus drivers in some places. And how haven't all the other unions managed to learn from the RMT and Aslef if it's 100% down to the unions? They might have strong unions, but there are other factors at play that gets salaries so high. The franchise system has pushed up salaries, as well as the likes of how long it takes a firm to hire and train a driver.
P&O manipulated the fire and rehire rules, aided and abbeted by the British govermnent, who allowed the downplaying of Trade Union recognition agreements, and exploited different contractual laws and practices in the shipping sector. If we had a decent government, fire and rehire would be outlawed outright as the crass exploitation tool that it is; for all concerned. Effectively, P&O broke the law.
That's true. But if the successes for railway members are 100% down to RMT and Aslef despite the government also 'aiding and abetting' TOCs, it would be reasonable to expect the RMT to be able to achieve something for members elsewhere. But in the P&O case that didn't happen. RMT asked for crew to be reinstated which didn't happen. They could've also taken civil action on behalf of members if the members agreed. But only one crew member (who does actually appear to be a RMT member) didn't sign up for the settlement and NDA offered by P&O, so they couldn't convince their members to do that. RMT couldn't even improve the offered settlement.
There are very high standards for a train driver because the consequences of a mistake (passing a signal at danger, travelling too quickly for instance) are extremely serious - possibly resulting in the death and injury of hundreds. In most cases, a bus crash won’t kill anyone in the bus because it will happen at below 30 mph. There’s a risk to pedestrians and cyclists, but that’s usually just one individual, so the overall consequence of an error is seen as much lower. So it’s completely understandable as to why it is difficult to find train drivers.
It's not difficult to find them - the entry requirements are low every single time a role is advertised it gets thousands of applications. No TOC has ever said they can't find candidates or can't get enough people through the interview and assessment process. The problem for TOCs is that they need to pay a trainee for sometimes up to 2 years, plus pay all the costs involved in hiring them, before they can actually be let out on their own. So they just fought each other for the already qualified drivers instead, pushing up wages.
We’re not disagreeing! TOCs don’t want to risk 2yrs of a candidate’s training when they can just be poached immediately by any other company (or they might fail training or change their mind.) They’ve worked out at the moment it is cheaper to just poach from other companies. Train drivers are paid well because the standards are so much higher than bus drivers. A similar issue exists with airline pilots, very few airlines offer funded training schemes any more because it is too easy to just poach the trained first officer afterwards. They usually work on a student loan type basis (but a private scheme) or are fully funded by the student, at ca. £100k for a commercial pilot.
So a friend of mine who became a pilot a few years back (just pre-COVID) had his training funded by the airline, but the arrangement was apparently that he becomes liable for the cost if he leaves to work for another airline within X years (I think it was 4 years). Makes sense, and pay seems to go up considerably around that mark anyway, so it's effectively a loan.
Yeah. The way these schemes work is you’re paid £40k or so for a few years and £20k of your salary is hidden - used to pay back the loan. The company usually does something like if you do four years they’ll write 20% off or whatever it happens to be. But the loan agreement is separate - you’re liable for it if you quit being a pilot, leave training or fail final exams - and often there’s a significant deposit required too (£10-20k). It is definitely a career that is really hard to get into as an ordinary person though they do occasionally offer bursaries and the like.
Too strong unions = destroyed industry. E.g. British Leyland etc. Restrictive practices, refusal of new technology because it 'costs jobs', etc etc. There has to be a balance.
Completely ignoring all the other factors that contributed to their collapse. The oil crisis, the company wasting money on concepts that never went anywhere, inflation, and declining sales because of bad management and terrible marketing all played a bigger role.
Tho it has not worked out for them recently as the gov has refused to budge on their last offer
It is almost 0% the reason. The main reason is that driving a train takes way more training, the consequences of a mistake are far more serious, and there are way fewer train drivers than bus drivers.
Training bus drivers is a far lower barrier to entry than buses so there's far more qualified people so it's more than just a union.
Hearing the training that train drivers go through and the insane pool system it does seem like a unnecessary high barrier rather than a logical one.
It's always going to be somewhat higher as driving on roads is something most adults can do so converting over to a PSV license is far easier whereas rail knowledge is something you only get in the job.
Does it? They generally have more people on board than a typical airbus, why would you not have only the best of the best at the controls? Training for pilots is extremely difficult and generally extremely expensive, train driving by comparison is easy to get into For every driver job there is a thousand people that want it, they can set the standards to only accept the best people. It is why our railway network is one of the safest in the world.
> more people on board than a typical airbus, Those people are not flying above the ground at hundreds of miles an hour in a complex machine with complex navigation, meteorological and communication requirements. The relative simplicity of rail is a huge feature. Not sure if that has any consequences on training or salary but still.
But on the other hand, a typical wide body jet captain has a first officer plus a dozen crew to help them out with any safety issues with the passengers. A train driver in some cases may be the only member of rail staff on board with 500+ people on their train.
> They generally have more people on board than a typical airbus They generally don't. Outside of rush hours, most trains are well under-capacity. Much of the network outside SE England is also made up or 2 or 3 car services that have a capacity of a couple of hundred people. While airline load factors are often well above 90%. A train driver can't turn all the safety systems off and drive completely manually like a pilot can. A plane can't automatically be brought to a halt if the pilot is flying it too fast or it goes somewhere it shouldn't go.
>It is why our railway network is one of the safest in the world. It's also one of the slowest
Going to back that up with stats? Didn't think so EDIT: oh look, I was right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_Kingdom https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-high-speed-rail-development-worldwide https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/28/british-trains-up-to-four-times-slower-outside-south-east-research The data does not mention that the reason the max speed is 300km/h is due to the channel tunnel (HS1). Other than that, most lines are limited to 200km/h which would be the slowest in the table. Again, that is theoretical. Not only are we slower theoretically but we are slower due to line faults, congestion etc.
Post the channel tunnel there is also a decent chunk of 140mph track, which would also not be the slowest in the table. The table you have linked doesn't put the UK at the bottom, or particularly near it. You can't back up your statement with evidence that contradicts what you said.
Completely wrong. Have you had the pleasure of being on a Greek train?
>They generally have more people on board than a typical airbus, why would you not have only the best of the best at the controls? Number of people on board is not the only determinant of how much of a barrier is necessary. Also relevant is how complex the thing you're doing is.
> It is why our railway network is one of the safest in the world. There does need to be a trade off considered at some point though - if the safety comes at too high costs, which forces people onto the much more dangerous roads (through higher fares) it can end up being a net negative for society
Are you suggesting that the reason train fares are high is because of train drivers?
I mean it logically makes sense that if train drivers salaries go ip the train companies will then try to make that back by upping trains prices
It's not the train company that sets the fares, it's the department for transport
Labour costs are one of the main drivers of the price of goods and services.
So it's not the massively high infrastructure costs, or any other staff, it's specifically train drivers?
Per passenger kilometre, staff costs are the single biggest category of expenditure across the rail network. Merseyrail, Northern, TfW, Scotrail spend more on wages than they earn in fares per passenger km.
and those costs are specifically due to train drivers and not all the other staff they employ?
I recently heard they're paid as much as a commercial jet pilot.
A Ryanair captain gets 110k+ and a senior first offer 70K+. Always 2 on the plane.
Depends on the operator for both the airline and the train, you get paid differently depending on where you work
This is an unforeseen consequence of privatisation. Before privatisation, you could join BR (or London Transport) as a school leaver in a junior grade. If you wanted to become a driver, you would then spend some years learning and studying all the aspects needed to become a driver, and then take relatively short courses and practical assessments when an opening became available. There was always a large pool. When BR was privatised, and various elements were outsourced, that old hierarchy was broken up. The TOCs had to employ new drivers directly and the old training paths ceased to exist. The TOCs found themselves having to bump up pay if they wanted to recruit drivers who were already qualified. Furthermore, drivers now have to acquire the relevant knowledge in intensive courses of a few months, rather than gradually learning things over years.
But why do they have stronger unions? Is there an intrinsic reason or is it just coincidence?
From my experience as an ex bus and now train driver, the turn over off staff at bus companies is far far higher than rail companies. A lot of bus drivers didn’t join the union because they weren’t planning on staying very long. The job is very poor pay for the amount of responsibility that you have. After 6.5 years I honestly couldn’t get out of there fast enough, which is a shame because I enjoyed the job when I started.
More fragmented operation must also play a role. There are hundreds of bus companies, and it's not as much of a natural monopoly. Any random person can set up a bus company with a relatively small investment. Meanwhile, there are only maybe 10-20 companies operating trains. Much easier to have a strong union with a more concentrated workforce.
The vast majority of bus services are operated by Stagecoach, First, Arriva, Mobico and Go-Ahead. The bus industry is more consolidated than the rail one is.
I've no real idea, but I imagine it's easier to train up a bus driver than a train driver. All you need for a bus driver is a bus (which can be driven on public roads damned near anywhere) and a trainer. Applicants will also already be familiar with driving a car. Driving a train though? That's gotta require a different set up. There's far less rail infrastructure to train on, and that network is probably far more sensitive to/less tolerant of trainee causing a slight delay.
Why didn’t you enjoy it later on, just burnt out?
Mostly, but there was a few reasons. 1. Constantly fighting the traffic every day 2. Horrible people using the bus, but 99% of users were absolutely fine 3. All the nice routes into the countryside got cut so I spent more time sat in city traffic 4. The newest buses we had (street lights for any other bus drivers here) were horrible to drive 5. Split shifts
Just started bus driving....split shifts, LoL.
It's only really ASLEF that are the strong union. RMT is a bit toothless. I used to work in railway (rolling stock - ie train) maintenance. The guys in my depot had done a 4 year apprenticeship to become a technician. They were just as responsible for safety as the drivers / signallers (just look at the number of railway accidents caused by maintenance staff) but there are many many fewer safeguards in place to stop them from fucking up. The guys I worked with were great, and their knowledge and training kept the railway safe. Compare that to train drivers. It's a 12 week course to go from walking off the street to driving a train. Any signal that can cause a major issue is protected by various systems to prevent that issue. But yet, train drivers are paid significantly more than fitters. When the annual salary increases are announced, the drivers get the lions share. Then the guards. Then the techs. Then the station staff. Then the managers - heads of quite major departments are paid less than train drivers; and similarly driver managers are getting paid more than the chartered engineers who're managing the maintenance departments. The number of technicians, whose apprenticeships were paid for by the railway, and a couple of senior managers who moved to driving trains was staggering. They left for an easier life and better pay. It's a ridiculous situation, IMO.
> undermine them at every opportunity Such as by writing articles encouraging crabs-in-a-bucket pulling down of the one industry doing it effectively.
I was going to say, this article's snide headline implying that train drivers shouldn't strike because bus drivers are paid less is clear capitalist influence
If an effective union tried this with low-end hospitality they'd pretty quickly find the industry to be a lot smaller and the wages not to rise very much. Same with fruit-picking, etc, that competes with imports. Effective unions can't go further than the price-setting power of / political will to fund their industry can. For the rail industry that's more than many.
You are probably right for seasonal hospitality work. Fruit picking I'm not so sure. There is a possible future where investment and innovation in better fruit picking technology leads to fewer but much more productive and higher skilled jobs. Unions definitely have a role in ensuring that the benefits of automation are more evenly distributed.
Railways are an easier piece of infrastructure to hold to ransom than buses.
Tbf tho the union has failed recently to get a preety good pay rise so they have just been striking for a couple of years with the gov refusing to budge
First and only answer. Because they are unionised. It’s not even a question.
From what I know about the RMT and people trying to get a job on the railways, you are up against a lot of nepotism, literally had stories of a station ticket office staff trying to pass a job to a relative on retirement (at one of the prime stations with few customers) the 'comrades' are basically aristocrats with a red flag
How true is this really? Just sounds like an anecdote to me.
Reads almost like an advert for being unionised
I was going to say, they're laying out some pretty good reasons for a strike.
Yes, I agree, bus drivers _are_ underpaid.
Similar to truck drivers really. An accident with one of those can kill people and cost millions in damages very easily.
Training a train driver takes a year or more and they are trained for specific routes so it is exceptionally difficult to bring in replacement if they go on strike, and if the train companies don't run the trains they are contracted to do they get fined by the government. Training a bus driver takes weeks and there are lots of bus drivers around and you can simply hire one to drive the bus that the striking driver won't, and if the bus companies don't run the buses the government doesn't care. The unions do play a role, but the role they play is exploiting the scarcity and power of their members, scarcity and power that bus drivers (and people in most other areas) don't have.
I know this isn't the case everywhere but around me the bus drivers have to have special training to be able to drive the bus through Menai bridge and the walls of Conwy town as there is literally half an inch space each side of the bus, blows my mind everytime they manage it. They still get paid shit.
Yeah surely its a lot more skill to drive a specific route in a bus with traffic What's special about any train route that requires any skill from the train driver? I must be missing something about moving trains because I thought they were on tracks and you could just go backwards and forwards on the tracks
Any road vehicle is driven almost entirely on the basis of what can be seen around it. You can't do that with a train – whether you need to slow down for a speed restriction on a sharp curve, for a signal at danger or to stop at a station, it's usually far too late by the time it comes into view. Route knowledge is everything, but so are the non-technical skills that retain focus and situational/geographical awareness when you can legitimately drive for miles with very little to do but virtually no cues to get you back into the room when you do need to do something. It's not just knowing where you are and where stations are, either. Which platforms do you fit into at a given station? Which route indications from each signal must you refuse, if offered, as you can't get to your planned destination that way? What are the speeds over all the crossovers and connections in a complex layout? This is all underpinned by extensive rules training, though, and 95% of what we know relates to the 5% of times when things aren't routine. You can't just pull over to the side of the road to wait for a man in a van to come and fix a fault, or evacuate passengers onto the kerbside in a breakdown or emergency, and things like infrastructure faults and engineering work involve a lot more than just obeying a set of temporary traffic lights.
A train is going faster, it's heavier and you're carrying more passengers.
They have to do special training for their door opening and close finger. Seeing as the rest is likely automated.
Someone posted a wall of text of things a train driver has to do and its all just 'remembering where stuff is' and no skill required, all memorisation Bus drivers should be getting paid more money than them really
>have special training to be able to drive the bus through Menai bridge and the walls of Conwy town as there is literally half an inch space each side of the bus Sounds easy enough. I have to get through a similar gap at work every morning. I've only hit the wall twice and I don't even have a driving license!
Exactly. There is a big difference in the skill set between the two roles.
The difference is in the rarity of those skills AND that the government will penalise their employer if they don't run the services. Any unionised group with a rare skill can force their employer to pay more, especially if the government or public with influence demand those services be provided. But a unionised group with a common skill delivering a service that the government doesn't care about, and that the pubic who rely on that service having no influence...
> The difference is in the rarity of those skill This. There's a huge pool of potential workers who can drive a car or van, and while you can't just hop into a bus and it be identical, there are transferable skills. I can't imagine any bus company would take me on and train me up as a non-driver, because there's so many candidates part way there. Who other than train drivers have any experience driving trains? You're basically down to fans of train simulator at that point. Every new worker starts at nothing, and unless train companies are going to train a surplus of drivers willing to undercut each other, then the skills will always be in short demand.
The unions also work to keep the barrier to entry high to ensure the qualified pool remains small. It's in the union's interest to require x, y and z certifications to do a job as that means their members can't be replaced at short notice. It also makes employers want to minimise turnover as they've invested so much in training. There are obvious benefits in safety (both for staff and the general public) as a result but when the unions make these arguments it's often with more than one objective.
This really isn't the case. The barrier to entry is *justifiably* high. Ladbroke Grove is the perfect example of what happens when you try to cut corners in this respect.
I agree that safety is a core motivation and the barriers are entirely justifiable, but there are also the protectionist benefits that come along with stringent certification requirements. One does not invalidate the other and a safety argument is the perfect vehicle to improve worker protections.
Why is this not the case with NHS workers?
They have a rarity of skills but exploiting that power comes with risk. When train drivers go on an all out strike then although people can't get anywhere and are deeply inconvenienced, most go 'up the workers' and support them. If say hospital doctors went on an all out strike and let people die, then I rather suspect they wouldn't get an awful lot of support from the public. Therefore their ability to take industrial action is limited to somewhere between making things a bit awkward and not letting people suffer too much.
Most doctors don't strike, they just get pushed to breaking point and emigrate to Australia, taking their education and skills with them.
Funny, this comment verbatim could be about the UK in the 1850s and it would be just as correct. The more things change...
I don't think you can compare modern emigration to Australia by medical professionals seeking a decent life in relation to their skillset and workload to convict transportation by 3 month voyage on a ship with a high death rate en route. But ok.
Fair enough.
It's such a shame, that should be a reason to ensure they always get paid in line with inflation as you can't risk them going on strike but that doesn't happen.
Because NHS workers work for the government and in this country health is more or less a government run monopoly. That means it is the government that sets the price of the labour market and not the market itself. If there was a mixed public/private provision for health then the NHS workers could move between multiple providers to increase their pay leverage. You do see a little of this at an international level, many Doctors and Nurses emigrate to other countries where the pay and conditions are much better, but since this is an option unavailable to most people then it results in continually depressed wages.
So why did you make this post if you know the answer?
The mad thing is, the Gov pay the train companies for lost earnings while the strikes happen. Crucially though, the train operators still get paid when workers are on strike, receiving compensation for lost revenue of £20m-£25m a day. https://news.sky.com/story/train-strikes-why-the-numbers-dont-add-up-to-a-rail-deal-12781077
The other side of that coin: driver less trains has been a thing for decades.
STRIKING LEADS TO HIGHER PAY, PASS IT ON!
That's the problem though - they do pass it on. You pay the workers more, they go out into the economy and they spend that money, they drive more demand which creates more jobs and higher wages and before you know it you've got a higly productive thriving economy and we can't have that. It gets even worse though! Those highly paid bus drives force the bus companies to focus on finding more efficient routes and services driving up efficiency and creating a much more effective transport system. Before you know it we've taken a load of highly polluting diesel cars off the road, everyone is taking the new efficient bus services and we can't find anyone to fill up those car parks in the centre of town.
Nah this is partially true. While higher salaries might increase productivity, we have a supply side issue in the UK. We don't and can't produce enough of what we need, being an island. And we've historically relied on imports and other not so friendly routes to suffice our needs. Now with exiting the common market, without any proper alternative free trade market, we're facing less supply with the same demand. Putting more money in the hands of people would only drive up inflation. For example, supposedly there are 20 aubergines in the market and everyone has £1 to spend, the aubergine would be priced at £1. Without bringing more aubergines into the market, if we give everyone £2, it'll only mean that the same people wait for the same aubergines just with more money to spend on it. Means the aubergine would just go up to £2. Higher wages don't increase productivity in this case since it leads to an inflation spiral without fixing the supply issue and inflation eats up the power of the new salary before it could drive growth. And people would strike again. The Tories fucked up bad but we fucked up worse with self inflicting Brexit. :'(
Or supply goes down, prices go up and many people now can’t afford what they used to purchase, their standard of living decreases and they start saving, meaning less money in the economy and the economy starts to retract Those bus companies now can’t afford the pay rises, and they’re not raking in enough from ticket revenue so they have to make cuts to their services to find savings otherwise face going out of business entirely. Before you know it, we’ve added a load of ‘highly’ polluting diesel cars onto the road and the town centre is booming because people can go wherever they want, whenever they want.
Everyone is paid way too little full stop and we need systemic change
If everyone is paid too little then everyone is paid correctly. It's impossible for everyone to be paid too little. Wages and spending power are relative.
90+% of us are underpaid, so that the rest can pocket the difference. Better?
Wages are too low relative to housing costs.
This is the most ass backwards take I’ve seen. Let’s take an example. If everyone is paid poverty wages, then it’s right? The issue here is that the vast majority are underpaid, and those in positions of power exploit this to further their wealth at the expense of the rest of us How does the cool aid taste?
There are factors beyond wage level that impact effective spending power. If 99% of wages grow slowly for 20 years but rent and utilities grow rapidly over the same period then its very easy to see how essentially everyone's wages could be too low. Especially if that period also witnessed record profits for companies and record growth in remuneration for C-suite executives.
Going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I don't think £750 per week is actually a bad salary for people who are doing a fairly unskilled job like driving a bus – no comparison to train drivers who are actually surprisingly skilled at their jobs, as they have a lot more to contend with and need a far greater knowledge about the vehicle, in addition to the rail network that they use.
Lots of people suggesting that bus drivers should strike for better pay, it seems like a solid plan with one minor drawback. Outside of London where buses are regulated they're so unreliable that many simply wouldn't notice.
The bus drivers up here actually went on strike towards the end of last year. They eventually ended up accepting a deal that to my eyes wasn't much better than what they were offered in the first place.
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All correct. I am a bus driver (<1 year) and on a full time contract I make around £415 after deductions a week (42 hours a week) The busses are shit, cold and damp and break down often which ends in dealing with irate passengers. My training was three weeks in the academy (CPC then practical test) followed by 7 shifts of route learning. Also the shifts are horrendous, no paid breaks means I could be out of my house for 10 hours and paid for only 8. We have a union and are currently negotiating a higher pay.
Also on top of this there seems a view that bus drivers are stupid. Had a confrontation with a student with this view who shut right up when I told him I had an honours degree in biomedical science.
Here I am finding out that I get paid less than bus drivers as a postdoctoral scientist…
Most bus drivers outside of London aren't on £750 a week.
https://twitter.com/Chris_TheDriver/status/1540380411964129287?t=coI3S5-dx4cmB0gLaE5TbQ&s=19 This guy describes the train driver recruitment and training process in great detail here. Gives some indication of what drivers ACTUALLY go through to get where they are.
Half of the country is underpaid. Massive strikes should be at the ready.
Because most people can drive a car, so learning to drive a bus from there is pretty straightforward. The barrier to entry and training requirements to drive a train instead is much more complicated. I'm more surprised a supposed journalists can't figure out that for themselves and instead write an article about it.
Unions. Unionise and take effective action.
Perhaps these bus drivers should band together and demand more pay.
Because the train drivers have strong unions and so have avoided being exploited. If all unions were as strong all wages would be better.
It is not a race to the bottom, don't fall for media hype! Don't be jealous that train drivers, and the others they don't talk about that are also part of the union, are striking for better conditions. Instead join with them and expand the stake! The greatest shame of the strikes of the last few years wis that there has been no call.for a general strike - cause only then will the government be forced to do something other than grandstand.
Because in Britain you aren’t paid what you deserve, but what it would cost to replace you with immigrant labour. The only exceptions to the above are those who still have trade unions and a decent bargaining position.
Your point about being paid based on what it would cost to replace you is true, but adding the part about immigrant labour is just daft.
>the part about immigrant labour is just daft you think increasing the supply of labour doesn't reduce the value of labour?
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I see this talking point wheeled out all the time, but.... it makes no sense? There's more than 1 immigrant.
It doesn't have to be immigrant labour and it's not exclusive to Britain. In a neoliberal system your pay is determined by how replaceable you are coupled with your ability to negotiate. Strikes are a symptom of that system. If we gave workers more effective power to get better wages we wouldn't have strikes but we'd also have higher paid workers across the country and that would be bad for the shareholders. Always remember, Britain doesn't belong to the people who live and work in Britain, it brings to the people who own shares in Britain.
I think you're missing a point: there is no "enough wage". You always want more. The second point is. Wages are paid in prices. Higher wages usually means higher prices.
There is not a shred of evidence migration has impacted bus driver wages.
Two decades of uncontrolled net migration with stagnant wage growth and no increases in productivity. The reason why economists and the chattering classes don’t have any evidence is because they don’t work in those jobs under the threat of being replaced.
The second half of the sentence is not correct... You are paid as little as the company can get away with.
Farmers would literally prefer their fields of crops to be composted rather than paying the price required to get British workers to do the job. For whole industries, the goal is not to offer a salary competitive for a long term future, it is to attract new economic migrants willing to work for a wage below what the job is worth to live a decent life.
>Farmers would literally prefer their fields of crops to be composted rather than paying the price required to get British workers to do the job. because British consumers have absolutely no interest in paying the sums required for farmers to employ British workers like that. because supermarkets will simply buy the produce from a cheaper country if prices go up to offset needing to pay British workers enough to entice them into a thankless profession like farming that is a) very seasonal b) requires you to give up a lot of comforts of modern life. Why underplay that?
> Because in Britain you aren’t paid what you deserve How do you work out how much you deserve?
I see this as an issue of responsibility. A minor bump or accident in a bus is no big deal in the scheme of things. There are no minor train accidents. You mess up in a train and there is the potential for mass fatalities. Having said that, I agree bus drivers are seriously underpaid.
Trains can have minor accidents too. Sure, some are high speed high fatality ones (very rare though) - but it’s not like buses don’t crash on motorways too. Trains also have all sorts of safety systems built in - buses have none. It would be interesting to see what tram drivers are paid - arguably all of the safety issues of the railway with all the of the traffic risk and passenger dealings of buses. If they’re not paid the most, then the pay probably isn’t just about responsibility.
Tram drivers in Edinburgh don't directly deal with the public the way a bus driver would.
Where are these 125mph trams?
Everyone that works for a living in this country needs a raise.
training, ability, and responsibility and much much higher for a train driver. pay is not equal to the amount of customer abuse you get. anywhere.
find some group paid less than another group who are better paid and are striking for better pay/conditions and pit them against each other. The go to right whinge tactic.
Yep, it's not the the Times generally gives a thought to bus drivers.
This is an absurd comparison. It takes about 2 years to train a train driver, and it costs about a hundred grand. It takes 6 weeks to train a bus driver, and costs about a grand. One is a properly difficult skill bearing a tonne of responsibility, the other is an augmented driving license. You don't get paid more for having uncomfortable conditions, you get paid more for having an in demand skill set. Train drivers have also used the unions well to improve their conditions.
Why does it take so long to learn to drive a train? The controls must be very simple. What more is there in the training?
It doesn't take two years, it should take a year to 18 months to have a driver that is passed out and competent. It also doesn't cost 100k, the figures do differ depending on which TOC they're training at as you have to factor in the wages of the guys training them, though generally TOCs like to do this on services that have passengers on, so you're not running a very expensive train up and down the mainline empty. Northern do run empty stock to train drivers, however, they also have one of the quicker driver training operations. They don't pay their drivers anywhere near 100k so you don't have to factor in the wage of the trainer so much.
https://twitter.com/Chris_TheDriver/status/1540380411964129287?t=coI3S5-dx4cmB0gLaE5TbQ&s=19
Literally fighter pilots
Thank you, that was quite interesting.
Well there's running the trainee train driver around in an empty train while they train. For instance, [Great Central](https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2024/01/great-central-railway-acquires-two-class-153s-for-driver-training.html) acquired two class 153s for driver training, delivered last December. Those trains require maintenance and fuel, plus Great Central will want paying for the use of their track for driver training.
Yeah its just backwards and forwards, whys this require 2 years training? Its mental
Firstly, the training is typically between a year and eighteen months. There are different sections in the training. Rules - you must learn the extensive rule book completely. There are lots of rules and they’re all relevant and important. There is an exam at the end of your rules course which you must pass. Traction - you need to learn all about each type of train you drive, because if there is a fault and you’re in the middle of nowhere, you will be required to fault find and know where equipment and isolation cocks/MCBs are to get you moving again, if possible. If safety systems need to be isolated, this is where specific rules come in. There is an exam at the end of each traction course that you must pass. Practical handling - spending at least 250 hours driving with a driver instructor. This teaches technique and also builds up your route knowledge. Some TOCs expect drivers to learn all of their route knowledge during practical handling, others will expect them to learn a core route only and will do the rest of their route learning when they are qualified. Usually at this point you will be driving trains that are in service, with passengers on board. Route knowledge - what do I mean when I talk about route knowledge? You have to know the route you drive in fine detail. You have to know where every signal is, where every station is, where every change of maximum line speed it, how long the platforms are at each station, where to apply your brakes to stop at each station depending on the weather/railhead conditions, where any route/junction indicator will tell you, what speed you are allowed to go over specific points at, etc. You also have to be able to know and do all of these things at night when there is no light and in thick fog. At the end of your 250 hours, you will have a final exam that re-tests your retention of the rules and traction knowledge, as well as assessing your adherence to the professional driving policy along with your route knowledge. This process normally takes between one and two weeks and you cannot make one single mistake. But, sure, it’s just backwards and forwards.
This could easily be simplified.
You know what, it really can’t. It could be simplified, it would have been. The last company to try to cut training down to half the time were found to be partly responsible for the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster, because of inadequate training and experience. There have been plenty of innovations and advancements in training and our understanding of how people learn, but the basic training structure remains the same - because it is robust, it works and it arms trainee drivers with the knowledge and skills they need to do their job in all circumstances. I’ve been training drivers to drive trains for nearly twenty years. What is your expertise in this field?
Flying a plane is so easy, it's just up and down. Why this requires two years of training is fucking mental.
Yea, I bet being a bus driver sucks sometimes. Gunna make an actual guess at why pay is lower than train drivers though... Almost everyone can drive a car, which means you could also drive a bus with very little training as the skills are the same. Almost everyone I know can drive a car, and I don't know anyone who can drive a train. Driving a train would require more dedicated training to make you qualified. I don't know anything about either as I've never driven a bus or a train. But that would be my first guess for why the pay is different.
It’s an interesting question about how we should pay people. We tend to do it based on supply and demand for labour, but you could argue that we *should* do it based on the stress of the job (which seems to be what the article is arguing) or the productivity of the individual (which relates to demand for labour). In terms of productivity, a train travels further per hour because it’s faster and the largest trains carry 10 times more people than the largest buses. This suggests that train drivers should be paid a lot more than bus drivers.
Stress is factored into supply & demand. If the job is so stressful that they can't get enough people to do it, they pay more and suddenly people are willing to do highly stressful jobs.
It should be based on how useful a job is for society, but we do the opposite. Teachers get a pittance. Data scientists working for a gambling shop make a fortune.
Why are pilots paid more than train drivers?
It’s because of the wings, duh 🙄 /s
Yeah they don’t even have to go backwards. They have other people that do that for them.
Because a train driver can move 1000 people at a time and a bus driver 100. And it's a lot harder to be a train driver than a bus driver.
Because train drivers have more of a monopoly and a really strong union.
Is this written out of genuine concern for badly treated bus drivers or is it really just a way of attacking and turning people against train drivers? I suspect it's the latter.
Crabs in a bucket.
Because every single employer especially government pays what they can get away with not what the person is worth
Trains require more training and more responsibility. Same reason we pay pilots more. Why are they implying these jobs should be paid based on conditions? If that was true sales staff at the front line of the supermarket would be paid more then the head office staff in a comfy boardroom. Or journalists who have to go out and deal with people more then editors who stay inside and just read what the journalists do... Pay is mostly based on what it would cost to replace you. Easier to find people to drive a bus, less so to find people to drive a train. This article is a poorly disguised "train drivers make too much" hit piece.
How much???? I need to become a bus driver.
Hello, I've been a train driver for 12 years and worked for two different operators. If anyone has any questions I promise to answer them transparently and honestly.
Is driving a train harder than driving a bus? It seems to me that driving a bus is more challenging. It’s a large vehicle in narrow roads, contending with unpredictable cyclists/pedestrians, you have a tight schedule despite traffic jams etc. A train is on a rail track, so less hazards than on the road where there are so many factors. Feel free to correct me
More power to them. PhD and postdoc salaries are in the same range. Goddamn.
> Why are the UK’s bus drivers paid so much less than train drivers? ...their railway counterparts — on higher salaries — go on strike Quite the puzzle, eh?
1000 lives in their hands rather than 50 lives? 🤷♂️
The question people need to ask when it comes to this article is how come someone who was in such an easy job such as a train driver left it for a poorly paid job as a bus driver? If it is that easy and that well paid why didn’t they stay in the well paid job? I’m just guessing that it wasn’t that easy after all
>Why are the UK’s bus drivers paid so much less than train drivers? A train driver can bring a train to a halt at a station inch perfect so that the train doors align with the edge of the platform. Time and time again. If a bus driver drove a train then only sometimes the train would stop in alignment with the platform. Sometimes half the train would overshoot the platform. Sometimes the train would stop 200 metres short of the station. Sometimes the train might not even stop at the station. Have you ever caught a bus in a city? Assuming that you're standing level with the bus stop only sometimes will you have the bus stop by the bus stop. Sometimes you have three buses stopping together and have to dash the length of the two preceding buses to catch the third bus. Unlike a bus driver, a train driver can't just 'take a chance' and speed through a red light or fly past an amber light. Being a train driver isn't just sitting in a cab at the front of a train and 'pushing buttons'. You're in charge of a moving vehicle with many hundreds of passengers, often moving at very high speeds if we consider long distance intercity trains, and you have to be alert and on the ball all the time. I get that bus drivers also have to deal with a lot of shit, I'm not saying that driving a bus is an easy job, but surely you understand that driving a train is as different from driving a bus as is flying a plane.
Me remembering train driver overshooting the platform, reversing so the last door was on the platform. That inch perfect.
As my partner's Dad - a driver of most trucks imaginable, including STGO exceptional loads, for over 40 years - says, "Do they turn right? Do they turn left? Do they go in reverse? Do they fuck."
On the contrary, we do turn left and we do turn right. We have no choice in the matter, either. If you're in a road vehicle and about to miss your turning, it's not the end of the world. If we're still doing 100mph approaching a 15mph crossover, it's going to make a tremendous mess. Freight drivers routinely propel trains (i.e. reverse) anything up to ½ mile long...
Let’s be real, driving a train is far more technically complex than a bus. You crash a bus and worst case scenario maybe 10 people die. You crash a train and potentially 500 people dead. It’s not comparable.
Driving on a road is surely more complex than sliding along a rail.
Because 14 years of conservative rule.
Apes. Together. Strong. While I appreciate the Tory press attempt at turning the public against the 'greedy' train drivers, this just highlights what bus drivers should be doing
To no one’s surprise, the train drivers are on strike again. As Aslef’s series of walkouts rolls into its 22nd month, it has come to seem like a permanent state of affairs. But while train drivers will be joining well-worn picket lines, bus drivers will be going full steam ahead. Despite a smattering of regional disputes, they hardly ever strike. A typical train driver earns £64,000 a year. Bus drivers on the other hand? An average of £29,000 a year. This contrast has started to raise some eyebrows, not least among Sunday Times readers. Last week, a bemused Mr Roger France of Telford wrote to this newspaper remarking on the disparity. Are train drivers paid too much, or bus drivers too little — and is driving a train really more than twice as hard as driving a bus? Why do we hear so much from one group and hardly anything from the other? The obvious answer is that driving a train is more demanding than a bus. In reality, it might actually be the other way around. One man who’s well placed to judge the difference is Steve Russell: he’s done both. “Driving a bus was very stressful,” says Russell, 67, who was based in London’s Fulwell garage for two years. “No one will let you out, you’re constantly being cut up, motorcycles think it’s funny to do wheelies in front of you. It’s hard. It’s harrowing. “There are other things too. There aren’t toilets at the end of all the routes, so you really had to plan ahead with how much you could drink: sometimes it was like torture when you needed to take a leak. And the pay wasn’t that good: in 2019 I was earning about £13 an hour. No wonder there was a high staff turnover. The drivers are treated like cannon fodder.” Russell’s nine years driving for what is now South Western Railway were very different. “The job was great,” he says. “There’s no cars in front of you, no traffic lights: you have signals, but they’re there to protect you, not slow you down. And you know there’s always a loo.” The bar to becoming a train driver is of course higher. “There is a lot more training to become a train driver — nearly a year in my case, against a couple of months for the buses. So there’s a greater sense of professionalism. But after that it’s a very easy job to do — much less stressful than being on the roads, and the money’s much better.” In terms of the market, Nikolas Thomopoulos, associate professor of transport at the University of Surrey, says train drivers earn more because of simple supply and demand. “Bus driving in the UK requires only slightly more than a basic driving licence, and training is relatively short,” he says, “which is why it is often the first job of newly arrived immigrants. Given the high supply of bus drivers, their salary is quite low. But train driving is, quite rightly, heavily regulated because of the strict safety requirements … and trade unions perhaps play their role too.” Economics aside, there’s another key difference between the jobs: the public. Train drivers have almost no contact with them: for bus drivers, it’s constant — and sometimes traumatic. “Joe”, who asked to have his name changed for fear of repercussions from his employer, has been driving in southeast London for decades. “Just two weeks ago, a passenger was abusing some girls, saying bad words to them,” he recalls. “I intervened and he said, ‘Where are you from?’ I said that had nothing to do with it. So he said, ‘You are a f***ing Muslim, aren’t you?’” On that occasion, the abuser was arrested, but most incidents go unreported. Racism and abuse is a common story among bus drivers. A new survey from the union Unite found that 82 per cent of bus drivers were abused in 2023, both verbally and physically. Among the thousands of incidents, a Stagecoach driver in Yorkshire told of physical assault and robbery; a Lothian driver in Scotland faced racist taunts; an Arriva driver in Wales was spat at. Some abuse occurs when passengers avoid or refuse to pay their fare. Joe wasn’t the only bus driver to tell us that, even though London bus drivers were three times more likely to die of Covid, the pandemic did make some aspects of the job easier. “For two years we didn’t charge any money, and it was a lot less stressful,” he says. He also thinks that the stress of driving itself is getting worse. “The companies are putting pressure on,” he says. He points to the new iBus monitor installed in vehicles — an onboard computer which tracks the bus’s position. “You must be a maximum of two minutes late or early at every stop. They’re constantly monitoring you, marking you.” Joe’s length of service and chosen hours mean he earns more than many, but even so, he reckons he makes less than £750 for a 38-hour week — hardly a fortune, given the stress, the abuse and the customer vomit that is a regular feature of night shifts. Despite this, he exudes a certain serenity. “I tell the young ones, you have to learn to cope with it. I have my shed and many hobbies — I am a sports coach, I grow my plants. Work can be difficult, but I have a full life.” Are bus drivers such as Joe unsung heroes, paid too little for the harassment and stress they endure? Readers will draw their own conclusions. Meanwhile, the train drivers’ dispute will rumble on.
Even some nurses don't get paid 3k a month wtf!? I know for a fact which deserves to be paid more, my Dad's a bus driver and scoffed at this, guessing London means UK now?
Because virtually everyone can drive a bus, train driving-whilst probably being easy- is a totally different profession
>Why are the UK’s bus drivers paid so much less than train drivers? Didn't know that. Good question mate.
Because busses don't cost hundreds of quid
This has always been the way. When I lived in London (early 2000s) the bus drivers made £16k and the train drivers £30k - had just started my career and wondering why a train driver made so much more….
Train Drivers also face abuse, harassment and uncomfortable conditions. Just because there are high salaries doesn’t mean they live in a land of milk and honey!