Norway's Bus Driver Strike |
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27 September 2020
The Norwegian bus driver strike came unexpectedly to Bergen this weekend, trapping many like myself where we were on Friday night. In Norway the salary of bus drivers is set by the national government. Local bus companies are granted a monopoly and then they are required to pay the drivers a rate set by the government. Thus, because the government sits in the capital Oslo, that is where the bus strike started. After a week of striking there and not getting what they wanted from the government, the union expanded their strike to include Bergen. Buses are an integral part of the local transportation network and a large portion of the population here does not own a car. The local company with the monopoly to run the buses, Skyss, cannot come to a separate agreement with their bus drivers to get things running again. Likewise the local kommune and fylke governments are powerless. So we must wait on Oslo, where there trains on the street and a subway both unaffected by the strike. Here in Bergen one can still take a ferry, but there is no way to go anywhere from the docks. Likewise the train is running from the city center to the airport, but much of the population does not live along it's route.
The upshot is that while the Norwegian transportation infrastructure may be very good when it's running, it's a single point of failure. The system is not robust to perturbations. The cost of a taxi to town from where I am is more than twice the cost of a monthly bus pass. A monthly bus pass that is now worthless though, for an uncertain amount of time. Once in town there are the Ryde scooters which cost 3 kr a minute. In Oslo there are half a dozen such scooter services. There are also the city bikes which cost 10 times as much per 45 minutes. I am fortunate to have a bike, but Bergen does not have the greatest weather to bike in. Many are also not as lucky to have a bike or be as fit to use it as I am.
In Norway bus driving is a career. It is not a stop on the career advancement ladder. It requires long training and like so many jobs in Norway, it is a permanent position. They are even called sjåfør, which is the Norwegian phonetic spelling of the French word chauffeur. The union controls their pay through negotiation with the government, which sets amounts people with a certain education level must be paid, regardless of the value they add to a business. The union has decided that the drivers deserve to be paid more, and they know that the monopolies they drive for will not be allowed to go bankrupt. "Too big to fail" is policy here too.
Do I love having an extensive and on time public transportation network? Yes. Do I think having it be controlled so tightly by the government works? No, I do not. It is an expensive system with many empty buses and with only self powered or very expensive competition. Like so many things in Norway, it is made that way socialist government policy. As long as the oil flows from the North Sea, however, they will not be forced to deal with the wastefulness of the system. The bus drivers will get their salary increase after the government has wasted what it decides is enough of our time to save face in their capitulation.