NO BONUS FOR TRAVELLING PUBLIC
Latest BC Ferries Giveaway & Lavish New Sales Office Ignores Public Purpose
by William Thomas
A government-run company that continues to reduce its essential service in order to save money has just announced spending an additional $1.7 million in Thanksgiving “bonuses” for its rank-and-file workers.
In a startling announcement, $500 bonus cheques are being mailed to some 3,400 workers for reaching “financial targets” that have seen sharp fare increases and a 12% drop in passenger traffic this year.
The bonuses are rewards for “customer satisfaction” after widespread public protests against the usurious fare increases made national news last summer. Approved last March, the ill-timed Thanksgiving bonuses have nevertheless gone ahead despite sinking revenues from a steep 12% drop in ridership.
"Oh my God," Michelle Easterly said when informed of the bonuses. A co-founder of the Rock the Boat Coalition, Easterly said high fares are killing business on Hornby Island, where her empty ferry-dependent bed and breakfast has seen a 40% drop in revenues this year. Other island businesses have closed early for the first time ever, she told French and Anglo media across the nation. "I mean, we're becoming a ghost town, and nobody seems to care from government. So I guess the best thing we've got going is to vote." [Canwest News Service Oct 9/08]
The May 2009 provincial elections could come in the wake of yet more fare increases.
DOLLARS FOR THE DISILLUSIONED
BC Ferries has no choice but to bribe disillusioned workers, who are not being replaced as they jump ship in droves following the American “corporatization” of the hijacked public service.
“It's all part of our employee incentive package,” B.C. Ferries spokeswoman Deborah Marshall admitted, as captains and crews are shuttled up and down the coast on costly airplane flights in a desperate bid to keep the boats running as BC Ferries most experienced employees opt for early retirement - and bonus “re-enlistment” packages of up to $30,000 for retiring captains to rejoin the fleet, while continuing to draw retirement pensions.
William Thomas, a member of the Rock The Boat coalition, questions whether the Thanksgiving bonuses will succeed in boosting the morale of front-line ferry workers who face the public's wrath every day. "The morale among the employees, at least the ferry workers I talk to, is rock bottom," he told a reporter. "I don't know if they can buy morale for $500. I also know that they're really getting tired of being screamed at, is the only phrase, by irate residents and visitors in the ferry lineups. Of course, it's not their fault, but they're taking the brunt of people's ire, and it is major." [Canwest News Service Oct 9/08]
Thomas also doubts whether the extra $500 will cover lost pay from recently announced service cuts. Further reductions in ferry service are anticipated to hit island communities this year.
“We don't begrudge ferry workers an extra $500. But if there is money for bonuses, there should be money for fair rebates,” Thomas told a CFAX radio call-in show. “We need to see extra funding not only for ferry workers, but for the public they serve.”
BC Ferries carries more than 22 million passengers and 8.5 million vehicles every year.
BC Ferries boss David Hahn has promised fare rebates once fuel prices come down. "I'd like to see rebates. I keep praying that if the [fuel] price goes down enough we'd be able to give rebates. I don't believe this is economically sustainable," Hahn told the Times Colonist last June 17, 2008.
After record highs, current oil prices are down to $87 a barrel. And falling as speculators who helped drive up fuel prices get “shorted” in an ongoing economic meltdown that continues to see corporations and their CEOs receive huge bonuses, while taxpayers get hammered.
FEELING PERKY
BC Ferries executive bonuses have yet to be disclosed. The people overseeing the destruction of BC Ferries are on a different bonus plan, Marshall said. With one nervous eye on the provincial homicide rate, she added: “We're just not prepared to discuss that right now.”
One hint of additional executive perks came last April Fools Day, when B.C. Ferry Services board members each received an $18,000 pay increase - after raising fares for island residents and the traveling public another 8%.
Why do they use a corporate formula to continue to award raises for a public transportation system? one blogger wants to know.
American BC Ferries CEO David Hahn is paid $250 an hour - more than $300,000 a year -for doing to BC Ferries what he did to Ogden Aviation. Before coming north to wreck the BC Ferry service, Hahn masterfully presided over the bankruptcy and sell-off of that major US aviation company. Some 25,000 employees took the hit as operations closed in 30 countries. Shareholders and taxpayers also suffered massive losses in Hahn's “practice” transportation debacle.
Meanwhile, Hornby Island residents “Experience The Inconvenience” of constantly rising fares … as their once vibrant community becomes a ghost town. Thomas fears that many of the island's 55,000 annual summer visitors will be reconsidering their holiday options next summer.
Why not? In 2003, two people in a vehicle paid $44.50 to reach Hornby from Buckley Bay. On July 4th, 2008 that fare was $66.80. The following month, fares went up another 20%!
Hornby has the second highest fares between Vancouver Island any island community.
Four people traveling to Hornby in a car must now pay more than $100 for two crossings totaling three-miles.
Hornby/Denman passengers now pay the most per nautical mile travelled. Hornby/Denman residents have endured the highest percentage increase in prepaid fares since 2003. Yet their average annual $11,699 earnings are the second lowest in BC.
In other words, in facing increasingly unequal highways equal access, Hornby residents are currently paying the second highest fares in the Gulf Islands for traveling the second shortest distance - less than 3 miles - while having the second lowest average earnings among ferry-dependant communities.
Shame on him to expect everyone else to pay for his toll-free road home. While our still-public ferries become private roads into gated communities, the BC Supreme Court consistently rules that the ferries are part of the BC highway system.
As former Vancouver Sun reporter, Bob Sarti points out, “There are more than 30 communities in B.C. with populations equal to or less than those of Denman and Hornby combined. Every single one of them has free access - a road leading right into town. They don't have to pay a toll to get home. Those roads were built and are maintained from general revenues, in some cases at great expense, because of the terrain and the distance involved.”
Sarti adds: “Road users pay only 70% of the full cost through gas taxes and other direct levies, and we all pay the balance of the cost - whether we use their roads or not. SkyTrain, SeaBus and West Coast Express riders are rightly subsidized. But islanders are expected to pay 100%. Island communities deserve the same consideration. It's only fair.”
How?
“There are two ways to realize this. One way is for the government to support the ferry system to the same extent it would fund roads between points of comparable distances. Ferry users would pay the difference. This was the way B.C. Ferries operated until the Liberals started jacking up fares,” Sarti explains. “The other way has the users paying what they would pay to own and operate a car over equivalent distances to the ferry routes, with the government paying the difference. This is a method now being tried in Scotland and in Newfoundland.”
BC has more miles of coastline than any other comparable region on earth. The ferries are used by people from all over BC - and are essential to the provincial economy, as the governments of Scotland, Newfoundland and Washington state have realized in lowering their fares.
In recognizing the vital contribution ferries make to the economy, in Newfoundland and Labrador, the provincial government pays 83.5% of ferry coasts. No fuel or other surcharges are added to posted fares.
In Brutish Columbia, where Gordon “Gecko” Campbell has decreed “user-pay” for island residents supposed to bear the full cost of ferry service, government cuts to its “Minor” Routes contribution continues to sink - from 48.5% in 2005 to just 43% in 2007.
But it seems there is plenty of money to lavish on new premises at the Fairmont/Empress hotel on the Victoria waterfront. Described by CEO David Hahn as a “first-class, concierge-type travel centre,” the expensive new office (estimated by one realtor to rent for upwards of $180,000 a year) continues BC Ferries “aggressive” (Hahn's word) outreach to an elite, upscale market - while the island communities the ferries were intended serve are denied access and service through continuing fare hikes and anticipated sailing cuts.
But while the plight of islanders is ignored Hahn says he is considering adding new routes and services. "We might get into the overnight freight business,” he told the media shortly after announcing the bonus payout. If so, BC Ferries faces stiff competition from Washington Marine Group, which has been ferrying railcars overnight across the Strait of Georgia for years.
The posh new sales headquarters for BC Ferries is being added to a debt load that has seen reported net earnings for the three months ending June 30, 2008 slide a precipitous $6 million - down to $8.4 million from the $14.4 million earned during the same period last year before Hahn's biggest fare hikes and fuel surcharges drove a stake through traffic.
The American CEO now predicts that his company will dizzyingly drop from $37.1 million to $10 million this coming year, as he continues on target to make this essential service so costly to operate only the major, money-making routes will be retained.
Despite these catastrophic sales figures confirming the insanity of his policies (at least from a public service point of view), Hahn told the press he expects only “a slight drop on the number of BC Ferries passengers this year.”
The ferries saboteur pledged to further wreck the fleet by letting key staff quit without being replaced. "If somebody resigns or retires, we won't necessarily fill the position,” he promised.
Extra holiday sailings not advertised in advance will also be cut, he added, ensuring that many stranded travelers will quit taking BC ferries. Vessels will also be downsized on certain routes.
Please check back to the Rock The Boat pages on this website for further updates on how you can respond.
