Otago bus drivers are celebrating after the Otago Regional Council agreed to pay them the living wage, and to backpay them from July last year.
The decision was made in a public-excluded section of a full council meeting in Queenstown today.
However, the word quickly spread, as members of the Dunedin Tramways Union waited outside the meeting room for the verdict.
It has been a long-awaited victory for Dunedin and Queenstown bus drivers.
A commitment to provide funding to pay Orbus drivers the living wage of $22.10 an hour by July 1, 2020, was made by the council when it approved funding for it in its 2020-21 annual plan in June last year.
But about 10 months on, bus drivers still were not receiving it.
Frustrated bus drivers attended a regional council meeting last month, demanding to know the whereabouts of their promised wage increase.
The union was told the council still intended to introduce the living wage, but was waiting until at least one contract was re-tendered and awarded with a living wage component before it negotiated with operators of its other existing contracts to also include the living wage.
Bus drivers and union members are celebrating the win in Queenstown today and have posed for photos with Otago regional councillors, posting them on the union's Facebook page.
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Imagine a job where you get paid as much as a bag boy for driving 30 unrestrained (some standing) and sometimes aggressive people around town congestion parking in tight spaces every half kilometre. Having basically a terrible for your health sit and stress job (just look for all the obese bus drivers). Employed by outfits who tendered the least for the contract from a Council who doesn't care about air quality with $30 mill in the bank and if you have a accident due to mechanical failure the court will fine you for driving a bus without brakes and let your Employer the owner of the Bus off. That is my experience of being a Bus driver in Dunedin.
Do the bus drivers deserve this yes they do but to drive 3/4 empty buses around dunedin is that good business no it is not least we know where the ridiculous rate increase is going to