Canberra: the home of the $91,000 (plus overtime) bus driver

Darkfalz said :

Masquara said :

School teachers get three months holiday a year

There are people who still believe this utter nonsense?

How is it nonsense? How many weeks’ leave do you think schoolteachers have?

Masquara said :

School teachers get three months holiday a year vs busdrivers four weeks. So how about an appropriate comparison, Pantsman? Personally I think $67,000 salary per year for a bus driver is about right. Most teachers are on considerably more than that (more like 80,000 + 8 weeks’ extra holidays), which makes them pretty darn well paid.

I’ll be sure to cancel my second Sunday in a row supporting my students just to fit in with your absurd claims Masquara. Not to mention my programming will have to take place in school hours as will my marking, attending parent-teacher interviews and the like. Oh and my lunch times which are given up to support students with their enrichment or assisting with class work.

You must suffer terrible vertigo from looking down at teachers from your ivory tower.

For the OP, the highest a classroom teacher earns in the ACT atm is $84350. I believe the figure quoted also includes the SLCs (executive teachers) who teach 60% face to face and SLB (deputy) who may teach 20% face to face.

It’s more realistic to believe that the $91000 quote for ACTION also includes managers who drive etc.

Darkfalz said :

Masquara said :

School teachers get three months holiday a year

There are people who still believe this utter nonsense?

How many weeks leave do teachers get?

mcleodwealth said :

Australian envy politics at work again. Ever vigilant to ensure that no one gets more than the bare minimum slice of the pie. You can’t pay teachers enough in my opinion, they hold the future of our nation in their hands, or police officers who are often a mental health crisis frontline. Essential services personnel have my support. I have no problem with paying for them. Some other ‘programmes’ I’m not so enthusiastic to fund though.

We approach paying our front line workers the wrong way. We should pay them lots more, but expect very high standards of performance.

Masquara said :

School teachers get three months holiday a year

There are people who still believe this utter nonsense?

$91k when it doesn’t take into consideration most drivers have rostered overtime and that they roster many more drivers than there are buses on any given day..

91k isn’t really that much for Canberra and I wouldn’t take it to be a bloody bus driver and have to deal with certain routes / class of people taking the bus.

mcleodwealth said :

Australian envy politics at work again. Ever vigilant to ensure that no one gets more than the bare minimum slice of the pie. You can’t pay teachers enough in my opinion, they hold the future of our nation in their hands, or police officers who are often a mental health crisis frontline. Essential services personnel have my support. I have no problem with paying for them. Some other ‘programmes’ I’m not so enthusiastic to fund though.

+1,000,000

Australian envy politics at work again. Ever vigilant to ensure that no one gets more than the bare minimum slice of the pie. You can’t pay teachers enough in my opinion, they hold the future of our nation in their hands, or police officers who are often a mental health crisis frontline. Essential services personnel have my support. I have no problem with paying for them. Some other ‘programmes’ I’m not so enthusiastic to fund though.

ROFL at this entire, ludicrous story.

School teachers get three months holiday a year vs busdrivers four weeks. So how about an appropriate comparison, Pantsman? Personally I think $67,000 salary per year for a bus driver is about right. Most teachers are on considerably more than that (more like 80,000 + 8 weeks’ extra holidays), which makes them pretty darn well paid.

Perhaps I am missing something here but I am not sure why workers providing essential services should be targeted. Firstly, this states only cost, not wages, as discussed, so discussion is moot without knowing actual wages. Even so, I’m not really sure it’s a problem what people are paid or what they cost without considering operational leverage – i.e. how much return do we the tax payer get from that investment? If the return is high, who cares what they get paid? It’s a win / win. If the return is low, perhaps there is a systemic or operational issue than a personnel issue. For example, we have all heard the debates about light rail – one interesting proposition being that driver / passenger density increases with light rail, thereby increasing operational leverage. Suggesting that you could increase wages of drivers by even 50% but if you increase passenger throughput per driver by 100% (trains can carry more people than buses not to mention other benefits) then everyone’s a winner – everyone takes a cut – including the tax payer.

I feel for those in essential services in Canberra when you consider the sky-rocketing cost of living in this city, and I would feel better knowing that those serving the city can actually afford to live in it.

I suggest this conversation is not very useful without knowing operational leverage, efficiency and so forth. And it also plays in to an unfortunate Australian cultural cringe that seems to focus on who’s getting what slice of the pie (politics of envy) rather than on how to just increase the pie so we all get a bigger slice – through efficiency, growth, so on. Or even managing a budget well enough so wages are not an issue.

If the system was running efficiently, then who cares what bus drivers cost or get paid, as long as it works for everyone. Why punish people for doing a good job.

knuckles said :

You do realise that these are total employment costs.
The actual salary for these professions is a lot less than what is listed here.

You’re right, but most on-costs are a fixed proportion, so the comparison between the professions holds true, even if the amounts seem higher than you’d expect. And the proximity of bus drivers with these other professions does seem to indicate a very effective union…

Even at this early stage Google’s driverless cars are only 150k each.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/06/google-discloses-costs-of-its-driverless-car-tests/

Wanon said :

Everyone else has covered it pretty much. Public servants cost almost as much as their salary to keep them employed after you factor in benefits, leave and HR costs.

The fully trained up bus drivers get a wage of $62k a year. Source: https://www.action.act.gov.au/ACTION%20applicants%20info%20FA.pdf

“On completion of the training and assessment bus drivers will be on a pay rate of $31.72 per hour ($62,880 per anum, pro-rata).”

I’m not in the public service, but the figure I’ve always used in costing an employee is around 2.1 times salary. Once you add up sick leave, rec leave, superannuation, insurance, office space, office supplies, electricity, computers, air-conditioning, toilet paper and every other damned thing, you’ll find it costs a helluva lot more than just salary to put someone on the payroll.

knuckles said :

You do realise that these are total employment costs..

You’d like to think the OP realised that, given it’s clearly stated in “Notes (a) and (b)” at the bottom of the text that was copied across.

knuckles said :

You do realise that these are total employment costs.
The actual salary for these professions is a lot less than what is listed here.

Ahhh but you cant let the truth get in the way of a “good” story………

Everyone else has covered it pretty much. Public servants cost almost as much as their salary to keep them employed after you factor in benefits, leave and HR costs.

The fully trained up bus drivers get a wage of $62k a year. Source: https://www.action.act.gov.au/ACTION%20applicants%20info%20FA.pdf

“On completion of the training and assessment bus drivers will be on a pay rate of $31.72 per hour ($62,880 per anum, pro-rata).”

You do realise that these are total employment costs.
The actual salary for these professions is a lot less than what is listed here.

Actually that 91k you are talking about appears to be the amount it costs to employ a bus driver, not how much they actually get paid. If you move down the document to Attachment A you will see the figures worked out for the average person. It has a total costing of around 93k for a person with a salary of 67k. There are also additional costings of workers compensation etc. for that employee which then indicates that the bus drivers get less than 67k. 67k is not that high a salary…

The title says “plus over time” but the notes say “includes over time”.

Doesn’t really tell us much though. A pretty big chunk of that $91k would go in the extras we don’t normally think of when stating our income. On the other hand I would think there would be some bus drivers who only work part time hours, and this is an average, someone is making out.

One day when I am really bored I’ll read ACTIONs annual report (assuming they have one).