Let's organise to fight the cuts!
Dublin Bus plans to slash services and jobs on March 1st
Dublin Bus have announced to the trade unions that will sack 160 bus drivers and slash services on routes throughout the city from that date. In addition workers in other grades including maintenance, cleaning, shunting and clerical will be sacked. In total 290 Dublin Bus workers are set to lose their jobs.
In North West Dublin, the impact on our bus service will be dramatic.
Around a quarter of the scheduled services on the 13/13A route will be scrapped along with similar cuts on the 19/19A route.
The Finglas 40/A route will also be cut-back along with the 3 route serving Larkhill. In addition to the sackings and cut backs, Dublin Bus workers will not be paid the rises due to them under partnership in April and October this year. Working practices like overtime and travelling time are to be abolished.
This will mean fewer buses, more crowding and buses being too full to pick up passengers, longer waits and more traffic congestion as more people are forced to use their cars because of the wrecked bus service. People in the estates of Dublin North West, particularly Finglas and Ballymun, Silloge, Coultry, Shangan and Poppintree already face an unreliable and inadequate bus service.
Many people in these areas cannot afford to run a car and are totally dependent on the buses to get them to and from work, shopping, etc.
This is a scandal.
Six months ago the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport recommended that there should be an increase of 350 buses to ease traffic congestion in Dublin. If this were done there would be an important reduction in greenhouse gases which are leading to environmental crisis and life would be a little bit easier for the harassed inhabitants of Dublin. The Greens commitment to cleaning up the environment did not survive long.
Fewer buses on our routes
Instead the Fianna Fail-Green Party government is more concerned to bail out the crooked bankers of Anglo-Irish and other banks than maintain jobs and services for working class people. If Fianna Fail’s rich friends and the Corporations were taxed equitably there would be plenty of money to ensure the Dublin Bus service was improved rather than slashed and jobs could be saved.
Dublin North West People Before Profit Alliance is calling on all Residents Groups , Community Associations, local activists and trade unionists to come together in alliance with the Dublin Bus workers to fight these cuts. Together we can stop the government in its tracks. The People Before Profit Alliance in Dublin North West like its colleagues across the city, will be organising with others a broad based campaign of meetings and protests to urgently fight Dublin Bus’s plans.
As a start, a protest meeting will be held on Thursday 5th February in the Axis Centre Ballymun at 8.00pm. Details of speakers, etc to follow.
Cathy Bent, Tony Greene, Kevin Wingfield, on behalf of Dublin North West People Before Profit Alliance. Contact us on (01) 872 2682; 086-3074060, pbp.dnw@gmail.com or visit www.pbpdnw.wordpress.com
Filed under: Uncategorized
Surprised by joy-impatient as the wind
I wished to share the transport-Oh! With whom
But thee . . .
(Wordsworth)
Patrick Kavanagh said that no one could write a comprehensive account of Irish life who ignored the Gaelic Athletic Association. Likewise, any attempt to chronicle events of the last century would be far from complete if CIE was omitted.
CIE as a semi-State body was founded in 1945. From 1950 it brought out an “in-house” magazine. THE LINK ran from 1950 and was replaced by NUACHT in the ‘nineties . The last NUACHT rolled off the presses in 2003.
Thanks to a few dedicated employees most of these publications have been rescued from the jaws of obscurity. And now they are about to “share the transport (publications)” with all on DVD.
The first edition of the Link dated 24th November 1950 published a letter from the CIE Chairman;
“Dear Mr. Editor,
On the occasion of the first issue of The Link I want to offer you my best wishes for the success of the paper.
I feel sure that you, and your colleagues who contribute, or otherwise help, will do everything that can be done to make The Link a staff paper which will, as its name suggests, bind together the members of our staff in all grades and in all places throughout the country.
I ask every CIE man to become a regular reader and in this way co-operate with you in developing a spirit of unity and good fellowship in our organisation.
Yours sincerely
T. C. Courtney.
The Editor, Frank Finn, thanked all contributors for, “ . . . articles, notes, news stories and pictures which have helped me to fill this issue”.
The first issue carried articles on subjects as diverse as Charles Bianconi, the pioneer of public transport in Ireland, “The Goats of Westport” new loading gear for loading cattle on aircraft and an advertisement from Cotts of Kilcock, “Ireland’s biggest Mail-Order store”. In June 1951 the CIE lost property department had a “lost go-car” on its hands.
And in the Small ads section of May 11th 1952 you could have purchase a beautiful 3-plate electric cooker for £17 10 shillings. Decades of “Gleanings from the garages”, “Capital News”, “Notes from the provinces”, “Greetings from Christmas travellers” and accounts of funny happenings within the company are all there.
When the Nuacht came on it was soon published in full colour and had the effect of bringing employees, with a literary bent, who were shy about their scribblings, “out of the closet”. There is now in existence the “CIE Writers’ Group” which brought out a collection of short-stories, poems, essays and articles in 2005. The title of the anthology was, “There’s Love And There’s Sex and There’s The 46A” with a foreword by Professor Brendan Kennelly who described the contributors as, “ . . . writers, . . . keen listeners, sharp observers, constantly in touch with the foibles of humanity and, most striking of all they are gifted storytellers”. The group is now on the lookout for people to contribute to a second collection. And it all started with The Link and Nuacht.)
If you worked for CIE and did anything newsworthy, from “ missing a free” to acting as midwife on a crowded bus, there is a good chance that you are in there somewhere. If there was a picture of, or an article about, you or yours in any of these magazines now is your chance to re-capture the past.
DOWN THE DECADES WITH THE LINK AND NUACHT , on DVD is now available. Details from; CIE WRITERS GROUP, Dublin Bus, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.
ciewriters@gmail.com: