By Ryan Gray
Senior Editor

BOSTON - A hotly-contested issue of GPS onboard city school buses has the local school bus drivers union crying foul, while city and school officials argue it will increase safety of the district's pupil transportation population.

The issue became further galvanized amid a Dec. 6 report by the Boston Herald that cited 10 instances of school bus drivers apparently taking extended breaks while on the clock, with two allegedly sleeping on the job.

"Our investigation indicates that at least six of the instances were perfectly in line with the contract, namely that drivers were either waiting between runs for a short time until their next trip or they were waiting at pre-designated standby locations," said Rich Jacobs, director of transportation for Boston Public Schools. He added that two drivers were indeed caught napping, with one being disciplined for "unauthorized use of the bus" and the other "for not following route instructions.

"The fact of the matter is, I consider these to be anecdotal," he said. "We have over 615 daily routes that travel nearly 9 million miles a year. The instances described by the Herald are certainly the exception and not the rule."

The article did elicit a promise from Mayor Thomas Menino that the city would do everything necessary to ensure that BPS implements the tracking software, despite ardent opposition from the school bus drivers union, which argues that the technology is tantamount to illegal spy ware.

With city government support set, BPS spokesman Jonathan Palumbo said funding for the technology may now be easier to come by.

Enter the Fray

During contract negotiations this fall between BPS and Bus Drivers Local 8751, city councilman and transportation committee chair John Tobin first hatched the plan that would install the global positioning software on 720 school district-owned buses operated by First Student, Inc. The system, he said, would answer such costly questions as why are buses running late, and, if a bus breaks down, what is its exact location so the district can quickly retrieve it?

The local school bus drivers union did not return several phone messages from School Transportation News seeking an interview for this story. But in a released statement, Steven Gillis, president of the Bus Drivers Local 8751, said the GPS issue is another example of "Big Brother" bullying small labor.

"GPS technology, where it has been employed, has been used exclusively to provide unreliable excuses to bus companies to unfairly discipline hard working drivers and unjustly deny their rightful pay, while providing no safety benefit whatsoever to a two-way radio equipped fleet," he said.

The system would cost the school district $200,000 to $300,000 a year. The transportation department currently operates on an annual budget of about $60 million.

Based largely on the bus driver union's harsh anti-labor objections, Jacobs said the GPS proposal was dropped from the contract, even though the school district does not need the union's permission to install GPS if it is used soley for internal administrative purposes.

The union signed its new contract with GPS omitted on Oct. 28. But teamsters became irate when they learned the city council planned to move ahead with a separate resolution ordering the School Committee to implement the tracking software. What resulted was a war of words a heavy-handed response from the councilors.

War of Words

Following a heated - and by all accounts riotous - mid-November meeting with irate union members over the GPS issue, the city council voted 9 to 4 to punish the union's unruly behavior by temporarily withholding nearly $1.5 million in 2005 appropriations earmarked to fund the new labor agreement. The city council also passed by a 10-3 vote a resolution to the School Committee to implement the GPS because of its safety benefits and effects on preserving the school district's fleet serving a largely African American, Latino, Asian and Caribbean population.

"These guys are telling us what we can or cannot put on our buses," Tobin said, citing that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is installing similar GPS software on its entire fleet and has yet to receive any flack from its drivers' union. "We decided to send the appropriations back to committee for review to let the (union) leadership know you can't go around leveling such malicious accusations."

He added that he will vote "no" on every single union matter until he receives a letter of apology for what he classified as "on the verge of libelous statements" made to the council. The union accused members and the mayor of embarking on a racially motivated policy designed to destroy advancements stemming from a 1974 desegregation ruling making it possible for inner city youth to attend schools of choice.

Gillis said the votes "are a thinly veiled attempt to wreak havoc on the transportation system and the workers who make school choice and desegregation possible. The Boston School Bus Drivers' Union will fight with every means at our disposal this illegal attempt by anti-labor forces on the City Council to side with the bus company in tearing up our the Union contract before the ink is even dry."

Tobin added that, while he has seen a response rate of "100 percent in favor of GPS" from voters on the street, the leadership of the bus drivers' union waged a political battle of name-calling due to a perception of being "back-doored" by the council's resolution. Even though, he says, the proposal was completely separate from the contract and was borne from parental complaints over late arriving buses, and amid a recent one-month study by schools that found at least 27 cases of buses arriving up to an hour late for athletic events.

The city council met again on Dec. 8 and approve the new contract totaling $15.6 million over five years, Tobin confirmed.

Bargaining Table

Despite any organizational improvements lauded by the software, Jacobs said the union refuses to budge on GPS.

"It was clear that they do not want us to use the system even in a limited fashion," he said. "The leadership of the union is adamant that we could never use an electronic tracking system to impact a driver's request for time/additional wages, or to discipline a driver for non-performance."

Now that the mayor and school committee back the GPS resolution, and funding for the driver contract is in place, Jacobs said its exact use and how it impacts the school bus driver contract must first be determined through impact bargaining.

"There are a number of good reasons to implement the GPS" that would not hinge on union approval, he added, such as determining the accuracy of routing and knowing the location of a particular bus in order to give parents an arrival time.

Source: Reprinted from School Transportation News, January, 2005.
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