Driver from the Garage « Earthly »: I rest one day a week, when will it be the next I don’t know
I only rest one day a week. If you ask me when the next day is, I will tell you « I don’t know, » says a bus driver from the Garage « Earthlings ». It has 217 working hours in March, which means a 54-hour work week. His average salary is over 3000 levs, according to him, but of them 1100 levs are from extraordinary labor, « so my son cannot see me. » The boy is in fourth grade and because of the non -teaching day today he is with his father on the protest.
Another driver adds that he has 407 hours of overtime for 2024, which does 34 hours a month, a third discreetly complains that he was a divorce because he never knew when and whether he would rest.
One hundred drivers and auto -engineers stand at the entrance of the Zemlyane garage, where it is also the headquarters of the municipal company « Sofia Motor Transport ». Young people are not visible among them, because the starting salary is very low – 2100 BGN, says Vladi Tsvetanov, chairman of the CITUB Transport Union at Sofia Motor Transport. His colleague shows a fee for a salary of a driver with a work experience under 5 years. The basic salary is 2105 BGN, from overtime work 39 hours – 772 BGN, for night work 29 hours – 96 BGN, and social allowance 390 BGN and gross are received 3482 BGN. With the withdrawals and insurance, the driver has received BGN 2638.
« We are a second category of work and for her overtime is forbidden, except for 150 hours a month in emergencies, and we have been so for 20 years, » said the unionist Tsvetanov.
You leave work to pay off your vacation
570 employees work in the Earthlings garage, with the most bus drivers, followed by auto-moles and electricians in the two service halls for ongoing repair. The former protest mainly because of the exhausting schedule and the lack of rest, as well as for the non -use of leave, although it is 32 days a year.
« People are worried that they will burn them, and some are forced to leave to pay their vacation, and then they return again, » Tsvetanov tells Tsvetanov about the grip on the system.
« I’ve been working here since 1999 and this grief is still, there are no fixes, » Tsvetanov sums up. You need to start raising the salaries to make more drivers who now drive trucks.
The shortage of only bus drivers in Sofia is 250 people. « And new drivers come, there is nothing to drive because the buses are depreciated – their average mileage is over a million kilometers, » protesters explain.
Auto -mechanics complain about the lower remuneration – the starting salary is between 1400 and 1600 levs, but also from the working conditions.
Drill service
In the Hall « Maintenance-1 » is full of repair buses. The ceiling is gone, the thermal insulation on the walls here and there is old boxes. The men’s toilet has long been closed and now men and women use common – with a squatless squat.
The employees of the businesses for the ongoing repair of the buses receive from 1500 to 1650 BGN. « With food and internship additives, they reach BGN 1800-1900, » says the locksmith Lazar Lazarov.
I write to the guide but do not respond
He has sent written complaints to the previous management of Sofia Motor Transport, whose building is next to the halls of the service in the Garage « Earthlings », but they never answered him. Nine months ago, he again sent the same letter, but to the new board of directors, appointed without a competition by the « economic majority » at the Sofia City Council – GERB, BSP, ITN and breakthroughs from « Revival ». Nine months now has no answer.
« Three years ago, the chairman of the City Council Transport Commission Carlos Contrera (VMRO) came. I showed him the toilet, he said he would see what could be done. You see that there was no result, » Lazarov said.
He sees the reason for the difficult working conditions in the abandoned care of people in the garage and insufficient maintenance of facilities and equipment. He doesn’t expect something to change, that’s why his colleagues only want more money. Some loudly express fears that with the euro area their food supplements of BGN 300 would be depreciated. The rest nods in ignorance and there is no one to dispel their fears.
