Ongoing Newcastle Bus Safety dramas

Yet again, March brought more safety issues in Newcastle, with bus drivers continuing to suffer from incidents of violence on the job. It’s extremely concerning that there were issues with the distress button, and a driver was left without support. This is unacceptable.

We’ll continue to work closely with local delegates, police and the company to do everything we can to protect drivers. If it comes down to not driving specific routes at certain times, then that’s what we’ll do, but we want to leave no stone unturned in stopping the current situation before that point is reached.

While we are running into a variety of issues, one solution that helps them all is if we have empowered Transit Police, whose job is to tour the network and support drivers in doing their jobs safely. The RTBU is talking to other unions and the Labor party about bringing back Transit Police and how that would work.

Members are strongly encouraged to provide incident reports to management and a copy of these to the Union delegate. The delegate can then chase up on what has been done to fix the concern raised and report to that member about the result.