Unregulated bus companies

Concerned by the spate of fatal bus accidents earlier this year, Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga Jr. has made the sensible suggestion that the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) investigate bus drivers’ working conditions, as he suspects that “lack of sleep and rest between long trips could be a key factor in the rash of road disasters.”

Reading his press release, it struck this outsider as curious, however, that while it makes sense for DoLE to examine the driving hours’ regime of each employer, Representative Barzaga made no call for the Department of Transport and Communications (DoTC) to ensure that the legislation on this matter is adequately enforced.

Back in July, Malaya columnist Dahli Aspillera wrote on the same subject, although she agreed with Cebu Rep. Eddie Gullas that rail needed to play a bigger role at the expense of buses, as she was convinced that the DoTC was incapable of effectively regulating the conduct of bus companies.

Aspillera told of a recent experience in which she and 40 other journalists were driven on a day-long tour, then conveyed to their hotel for dinner, followed by a six-hour night-time drive back to Manila, all with the same bus driver. Again, it struck me as curious that she questioned only the prudence, but not the legality, of this.

However, I’ve Googled and trawled the DoTC Web site to no avail, and it has begun to dawn on me that there might be no such thing as a legally-enforceable set of bus drivers’ hours’ regulations in the Philippines. Such is not the case in other countries.

In the UK (where this outsider spent 11 years driving a London bus), bus drivers on local routes (up to 50 kilometer) are subject to the Domestic Rules. These provide for a maximum daily duty time of 16 hours within which a maximum of 10 hours may be spent driving. A break of at least 30 minutes for rest and refreshment must be taken after five hours and 30 minutes of driving, although there is a little-used exception.

Additionally, bus drivers must have a continuous daily rest period of at least 10 hours between the completion of one working day and the start of the next, although this may be reduced to eight hours 30 minutes up to three times a week. In any two consecutive weeks there must also be at least one period of 24 hours off duty.

If these maxima and minima were scheduled on a regular basis, of course, these regulations would still make for a very onerous job, but this is rarely the case. Employers who worked their drivers to the legal limit would swiftly find that they had an unsustainable rate of staff turnover. And there is a second reason, which we’ll deal with later.

Sometimes, the regulations will be breached not by the employer but by a money-grubbing driver who, for example, works the full quota of rest-days for his own employer as overtime, but then works the one when he is legally obliged to be off-duty for another company, usually in the coach sector. This type of infringement is more difficult to police.

What we have been discussing thus far are short-route bus operations as plied, for example, by London’s red buses — the kind of routes which in the Philippines would be handled by jeepnies. Both long-distance domestic and international journeys, those more comparable to what you call bus routes in this country, fall under a different set of regulations — the European Union Rules. Basically, these provide for: maximum daily driving of nine hours daily, 56 hours weekly and 90 hours fortnightly; minimum rests of 11 hours daily and 45 hours weekly; and a minimum break of 45 minutes after driving for four hours and 30 minutes.

As will be seen, the EU Rules are more restrictive and, you might object, would be unenforceable in the Philippines due to lack of resources. Can the DoTC afford to field a squad of investigators to conduct spot-checks on drivers’ hours? Well, bus companies pay annual sums for road tax and, I assume, vehicle licenses. If these sums are not high enough to cover the cost of enforcing the safety regulations covering the industry, maybe they should be. Besides, even EU countries do not rely solely on roadside checks. Instead, they have an invaluable ally — the tachograph.

The tachograph records the activity of the driver and the speed, distance and time of the vehicle and is legally required to be installed in every vehicle, whether passenger or goods, subject to the European Union rules on drivers’ hours. Transport operators must be able to produce records to the enforcement authorities for a period of twelve months. Tachographs are not unknown in the Philippines, but I am far from sure whether they are a legal requirement for long-distance buses and goods vehicles. If not, they should be.

The second reason that UK drivers are rarely worked to the legal limit is that most UK bus companies have entered into agreements with trade unions, thus providing a more humane regime. Outside of those fly-by-night companies which, since privatization, have attempted to make a profit by cutting every corner possible, the regulations are most often breached in the allocation of voluntary overtime. Here too, the trade union can act as enforcer, and as a lay union rep I sometimes called the attention of a garage official to the fact that an allocation he had made was illegal.

It is a rarely-acknowledged fact that in such vital industries as public transport, trade unions perform a role that extends beyond the immediate interests of their own members. Vigilant and responsible trade unionism in this sector can play a valuable part in ensuring the safety of the traveling public. –Ken Fuller, Daily Tribune

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