Passing buses and several cars loudly tooted support for Thursday’s banner-carrying protest, staged directly across Moray Pl from the NZ Transport Agency’s Dunedin office.
Among the protesters about 9am was central city worker Umi Asaka, who travels to work by bus each day and was "shocked" to learn public transport bus drivers in Dunedin and Queenstown were being paid barely above the new minimum wage of $20 an hour.
The drivers worked hard, and she believed they should be better paid, she said.
First Union organiser Sonja Mitchell said the Otago Regional Council and NZTA had offered support, but Dunedin and Queenstown Orbus drivers had yet to receive their long-awaited rise.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary attended the protest and said bus drivers worked "incredibly hard" in a difficult job, and she was concerned the agreed rise had not taken place.
A commitment to provide funding to pay Orbus drivers in Dunedin and Queenstown the living wage of $22.10 an hour by July 1 last year was made by the regional council when it approved funding for it in its 2020-21 annual plan in June last year.
The NZTA later agreed to progressively implement the living wage as a minimum base rate for bus drivers nationally, after the New Zealand Tramways Union and First Union campaigned for two years.
The council this week said it still intended to introduce the living wage, but was waiting until a contract was re-tendered and awarded with a living wage component before negotiating with operators of its other existing contracts to include the living wage.
NZTA South Island acting director, regional relationships, Ian Duncan, said after the protest that drivers were "critical to an effective public transport network".
"It’s a hard job and we value them," he said.
The NZTA agreed they should be paid the living wage and was working on it with the other involved parties, he said.
Regional council manager transport Garry Maloney said the council recognised the drivers were "essential workers with a specialist skill set and a challenging occupation".
The council was still working to implement within the financial year a commitment in the annual plan to have the council’s public transport operators pay the living wage, he said.
