Bus drivers’ union wins historic contract

Local 8751 members, supporters fight for successful contract. WW photo: Stevan Kirschbaum

The writer is Vice-President of Boston School Bus Drivers Union, United Steelworkers Local 8751.

Following nearly a year of bitter struggle, the 800 members of the Boston School Bus Drivers’ Union, United Steelworkers Local 8751 rang in the new year, having won a successful contract. It contained the first-ever “Retirement with Dignity” package for those who have served the city’s schoolchildren and the cause of equal, quality education since 1974.

The city’s bosses had planned 2012 quite differently for these workers. Last spring, British-based First Student, a monopoly stakeholder in U.S. school bus transportation, and its client, the city of Boston, presented the drivers’ union with 43 concessions at the bargaining table — a relentless strategy private and public employers have pushed with devastating effect across the nation.

First Student sought cuts in health benefits, wages, hours, working conditions and rights on the job. Behind the scenes, they implemented a new high-tech routing system, designed to consolidate bus stops, carry more students, speed up driving time, and cut driver hours and positions. They orchestrated a media campaign railing against the rising costs of school transportation, demanding a return to segregation-era neighborhood schools, and calling for increased privatization of public school services to charter corporations.

The bosses’ strategy didn’t consider the fighting mood of the school bus drivers and their allies in the labor and community movements. On June 25, the workers struck back. At 4 a.m., hundreds massed at the company’s main bus yard, surprising private security and city cops. By sunrise more than 500 workers, wielding “No Contract, No Work!” signs and backed by AFL-CIO officials and a courageous city councilor, shut down the corporation’s scheduled bid for summer work. Within days, most of the bosses’ demands were withdrawn, but the drivers had more on their minds.

“We don’t go to retirement parties; we go to funerals” became the rallying cry for the largely Haitian, African-American, Cape Verdean and Latino/a drivers. Many have been forced by lack of retirement benefits to work into their 60s, 70s and 80s. Some die before their next shift.

This outrage resonated throughout the city. On Aug. 24, the night before drivers’ work began for the fall school term, hundreds of drivers and supporters jammed the Boston Teachers Union hall for a Community/Labor Solidarity Rally. Teachers, parents, students and Coalition for Equal, Quality Education leaders spoke, backing the drivers.

City Councilors Charles Yancey, Tito Jackson and Felix Arroyo, elected by Boston’s communities of color, pledged their clout for “Retirement with Dignity.” Striking Verizon workers, wearing red shirts proclaiming “Will Strike if Provoked,” came in solidarity. Progressives from Mass­Uniting, the Women’s Fightback Network and the International Action Center raised the drivers’ demands as their own, earning rousing cheers. While “Solidarity Forever” choruses filled the air, the bosses requested more negotiations immediately.

At 2:00 the next morning, First Student’s CEO found nearly $2 million. The union’s demands appeared on their proposal, although for year three. On Sept. 7, the eve of the school term and with the local ready to strike, the union’s issues moved up to year one. The local’s elected, 15-member negotiating committee voted to continue the struggle for more justice.

At the job, the workers were confronted with Tyler Technologies’ routing software, Versatrans. The bosses’ program produced routes with zero minutes between stops, required drivers to pick up 70 students at more than 20 stops in 20 minutes, and defied other laws of physics.

Crisis was the result. More than 40,000 students were late to school daily. The mayor and media demanded drivers be disciplined. The union insisted that the company and School Department scrap the software and meet with drivers to rewrite the routes.

Ultimately, no drivers were disciplined. Instead, the city’s transportation director was demoted. For three months, bus company and city officials reluctantly met with hundreds of drivers at the bus yards. Route schedules were rewritten, reflecting human and actual-time realities, based on driver input.

Simultaneously, the union rallied daily with the Occupy Boston encampment at Dewey Square and Occupy the Hood in Roxbury’s Dudley Square. They led militant marches with Verizon and hotel workers, set up sound trucks for anti-war and labor marches, and participated in teach-ins, community speak-outs and veterans’ demonstrations.

The bosses noticed, even docking union officers’ pay when they left a meeting early to join the occupation, hoping in vain to slow the workers’ momentum. The union gained the upper hand in the yards, on the streets and in the communities.

Union wins ‘Retire with Dignity’; all concessions defeated

On Dec. 15, the local ratified a historic contract that for the first time provides the resources for its members to “Retire with Dignity.” It includes 40 new hires; 3,500 additional paid hours weekly; wage increases; and improved life insurance, medical, dental and long-term disability benefits. All concessions were defeated.

Moreover, senior drivers can now retire with assured medical benefits and a unique severance payment. Most of the workers’ financial gains came in a first-time company match to workers’ retirement savings, a victory that countervails current employer attacks on retirees’ pensions.

Stevan Kirschbaum, a union founder and a driver since 1974, explained, “In the face of a united, militant effort to win economic justice by our members, the 1% showed themselves to be weak, uncoordinated and entirely subject to the determination of the drivers to shut them down if our demands were ignored.

“We plan to use this momentum to organize with the communities to stop the resegregation of Boston Public Schools, to stop the shutdown of post offices and other vital social services, to turn around the schools-to-prison pipeline, and to build the movement that will truly empower the workers.”