The ACT government will again pursue changes to its agreement with bus drivers to allow more flexibility in the way staff are rostered to work at the weekends.
The long-running issue has been the subject of repeated enterprise bargaining attempts by the government, which have been consistently knocked back by the drivers' union, the Transport Workers' Union.
Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate officials on Friday told a Legislative Assembly inquiry the issue would be revisited in the next round of bargaining talks, due to take place in the next year.
Meanwhile, the government is weighing up a campaign to encourage more people to catch public transport as workers return the office.
However, Transport Minister Chris Steel said the ACT would take a conservative approach to returning the transport to its full timetable.
"Reliability has to be there because if people are going to wait for a service, they need to know that it actually arrives and that will always be my priority in the system, because it builds confidence," Mr Steel said.
"The worst thing that could happen is if we go back up to the previous level of service delivery and then we cannot deliver those services.
"That would be the worst possible outcome and that's why we've taken this approach. We're going to be conservative about it."
The executive branch manager of bus operations within Transport Canberra and City Services, Ian McGlinn, told the inquiry the reduced services allowed for greater flexibility in managing driver absences when they were forced into isolation.
"You can borrow and scrape and get people to do extra shifts but you can't continually do that," Mr McGlinn said.
Officials were asked what work was under way to allow for more flexible working arrangements for bus drivers.
Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate deputy director-general Ben McHugh said all options for more flexible work, including different part-time configurations, were on the table in negotiations with staff.
MORE A.C.T. POLITICS NEWS:
- Barr says ACT government decisions have little impact on house prices
- Federal candidates should commit to reopening, upgrading AIS Arena: Barr
- Mandate conflict reporting for ACT: audit
Mr Steel said: "There's been a detailed piece of work that's been part of preparations for the current enterprise agreement negotiations that are taking place with employee representatives on a new enterprise agreement to support an improved rostering system for Transport Canberra."
Weekend working arrangements for ACT bus drivers has been a long-running issue in the territory, with the government unable to get past strong union pressure.
A "hardline" approach to bargaining a new agreement with bus drivers more than a decade went nowhere, with the ACT government ultimately backing down from its key demands.
The ACT government again sought to introduce seven-day rosters in the 2018 agreement, but instead rolled over the existing agreement terms.
The government and the union had been locked in negotiations over a new agreement for ACTION bus drivers for almost two years when the deal was agreed in 2018.
