Brisbane Bus Strike Likely In Council Staff Pay Dispute Brisbane residents are being warned to prepare for a bus driver strike, with 7000 furious council staff from a range of different sectors on the verge of taking industrial action. The council has offered workers a 2 per cent wage increase - and an extra $400 for each person if absentee rates improve - in a move which has ""bewildered and embarrassed"" workers, particularly in light of councillors' $57,000-$96,000 pay rise. The council's bus drivers, heavy machinery drivers and electricians have voted to take industrial action in protest against the offer, Services Union assistant state secretary Neil Henderson said on Tuesday night. ""Everybody else will [vote and] be counted tomorrow,"" he said. Those workers include members of the Queensland Services Union and the Australian Workers Union. He said industrial action was unlikely to go ahead unless those unions voted in favour of it, however they were expected to. ""If those two unions vote up some industrial action, then you've really got some excitement,"" Mr Henderson said. He said workers were in "disbelief" that councillors' wages were being raised by so much at a time when the council was fighting workers over their pay. ""To be honest I think the staff are going to be very annoyed that they are having to work very, very hard for a very modest wage increase when their political masters are copping a massive increase accidentally,"" he said. Mr Henderson said workers were only hearing about the councillors' pay rise through the news media. ""There is nothing coming from the council," he said. In fact, I thought the council may have said some thing about the issue or responded in some way. ""The state government has been whipping itself into a frenzy trying to justify its position [on pay increases], but we have heard nothing from the council."" Brisbane City Council plans to take the dispute to the Industrial Relations Commission. Fairfax Media's repeated attempts to question Brisbane City Council about how it plans to offset councillors' wage increases have gone unanswered.