Twenty-two routes cut in Cambridge

Cambridge

Bus operator Stagecoach has announced it will axe 22 bus routes – and reduce the frequency of a further 15. Evening and weekend journeys will be scrapped on several routes serving the city, and rural Huntingdonshire will lose a number of services.
The changes will come into force on April 17. Philip Norwell, Stagecoach Cambridgeshire’s commercial director, said the withdrawal of public subsidies for some routes was a factor. He told the News the cut in the amount of cash it would receive for carrying passengers with concessionary passes made other services “less commercially viable”.

The last time Stagecoach announced it's half year profits - for the period to October 2010 - they had risen by 45% to £124.3 million.

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk

Metroline drivers vote on rotten pay offer

Drivers at Metroline in North and North West London will be balloting tomorrow on the company’s latest offer. Low pay offers will be familiar to every worker in the industry. Metroline’s offer, a two year deal, amounts to 2 percent on all rates of pay from 2010 with 1.5 percent in back pay.
The deal worsens the rate of pay for Boxing Day working and takes away a £38 enhancement for Good Friday working. Unite is rightly urging drivers to reject what amounts to a pay cut. If drivers were to accept, they would be allowing Metroline to drive down their standard of living. The Retail Price Index (RPI), the best measure of inflation, now stands at 5.1 percent.
The government’s own (less accurate) measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), stands at 4 percent. 

ComfortDelgro, Metroline's parent company, announced in December its operating profits are up by 11.7 percent to £187 million. The money is there to pay drivers a decent wage.

Canadian drivers vote for strike action

British Columbia, Canada

Kamloops transit and HandiDart drivers have voted overwhelmingly – 98% – in favour of striking. The 114 drivers are represented by the Canadian Auto Workers Union. National President Mike Byrne say with the way the runs are set up, and the split shifts they work, drivers are under a lot of pressure – and they took it personally when the employer offered no pay increase. The drivers and office workers can issue 72-hour strike notice any time within the next 90 days.

http://cfjctv.com

Egyptian transport workers strike against Mubarak

By Hossam el-Hamalawy

Cairo Public Transportation workers, who started a strike today in five Garages: Nasr Station, Fateh Station, Ter’a Station, Amiriya Station, Mezzalat Station, Sawwah Station, have issued a statement with a list of demands, calling for overthrowing Mubarak. 

No public buses will roam Cairo tomorrow, except those buses that will bring the drivers to the central station in Nasr City’s el-Gabal el-Ahmar, where the strikers have announced they will declare an independent union.
The strikers’ statement has also called for abolishing the emergency law, removing NDP from the state institutions, dissolving the parliament, drafting new constitution, forming a national unity government, setting a national minimum wage of LE1200 and prosecuting corrupt officials.
This comes as strikes have spread literally everywhere… It’s happening people… It’s happening… The working class has entered the arena with full force today. Mubarak’s regime’s fate will be sealed off soon!

http://www.arabawy.org

Bermuda: wildcat strike for sacked colleague

Danish transport hit by strikes

Last Thursday transport workers in Denmark stopped work in a day-long wildcat strike over a pension reform proposal that the government has made the centrepiece of their election campaign.
Workers angered by the proposal to abolish an early pension scheme halted city buses and stopped operations at Copenhagen airport and some harbours, union officials said.
The centre-right government has plans to phase out an early retirement scheme that allows Danes to retire at 60 instead of the statutory pension age of 65 and raise the basic retirement age to 67.

http://www.reuters.com