Newcastle Update 1 July 2025
Yesterday marked the beginning of the action around warning lights, which is proving to be an effective action against a company. Not only are we pressuring them regarding the wage claim, which is the main purpose, but they are having to take better care of the vehicles. Any level of disruption is a measure of how badly they’ve been doing that job and with almost 70 trips cancelled yesterday, it’s clear they’ve been doing it pretty poorly.
Over the weekend, mechanics were all over the yard and word is Volvo technicians were on site as well. No doubt they were desperately trying to work out how to clear the alerts without doing the work to clear them.
Of serious concern is that Sheddies were instructed to start vehicles and to clear any dash alerts that came on before drivers were in the vehicle. This means that while you as a driver are responsible for verifying that the bus is fit for purpose, you are unable to verify there are no issues with the vehicle because warnings have been cleared.
The Union has written to the company demanding the practice cease immediately or we’ll be reporting the practice to SafeworkNSW.
There has also been a direction to drivers not to use the battery isolation switch, contrary to driver training, company procedure and the manufacturers advice.
A response from the company yesterday to RTBU concerns included –
“To be clear, Drivers are expected to—and are able to—complete full pre-departure checks as per the KDH Bus Operators Handbook.”
This means that you should make sure the red rocker switch is turned from OFF to ON. If the switch is ON when you start your pre-check, you should turn it OFF then ON.
Remember you can access all previous bulletins here-