Unionised bus operators are scheduled to take a vote at Bermuda Industrial Union Headquarters today on the long anticipated new roster that has been in the making since 1998.To avoid the disruption of service, two separate meetings will be held one at 10am, the other at 7pm tonight. The final count will be made after the second meeting.In an interview with The Royal Gazette, BIU Organiser Louis Somner confirmed the Bus Operators and Allied Workers Division will seek to ratify the new roster.“I can’t say whether the members will ratify the agreement, I cannot anticipate that. I just hope that they are understanding enough to know that we need to go forward and this hasn’t been done.“The bus schedule has not been revised since 1998, theoretically we think the new schedule is workable, but now it has to be put to the test on the practical side.“The theory part has been done, now we have to get on the road and put it to the test, then we’ll come back to see if this new schedule could actually work; we want to see how viable it is.”Additionally, he said there are some benefits in the form of consecutive days off and more weekends off.Mr Somner said: “This is what we have been building on since I entered into the talks a couple of years ago.“Another benefit of the new schedule is we have shortened the spread time. We’re hoping the next time around to shorten the spread time even more for people to get home to their families even earlier.“We plan to tweak the turn around times manually based on the scheduled run times and the average time for the run times to get to the turn around points on time.Stumbling points in previous proposals included the issue of working consecutive night shifts and the issue of operators having little time to get to a rest room.Mr Somner noted: “There are some people who would like to work nights on a regular basis, but let’s be clear the schedule picks are based on seniority. Its unfortunate but the last to come usually gets the least favourite pick.When asked why it took so long to actually get to this point he said: “They talked about doing it with computers and then there was the issue of the foreign consultant.“Let me say this — it has already been done lets get past this now.“But going forward its been said and we’ve said it as well, the operators will be putting together the next schedule at least that’s what we’re hoping for.“This roster is the schedule done by the consultant with our input. In other words we put to the Ministry that we wanted consecutive days off, they sent that request over and everybody has consecutive days off now.Mr Somner noted: “We’re having two meetings so as not to interrupt the bus service.”